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Image credit: Xbox/Microsoft
Microsoft has shared updated Game Pass membership figures for the first time since January 2022, saying the on-demand gaming service now has 34m “fully paid” subscribers, with “significant growth” coming from PC and cloud.
That update comes via Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer, speaking to journalist Stephen Totilo for his Game File newsletter (thanks VGC) ahead of this week’s hotly anticipated Xbox ‘business update’ podcast – in which the company finally discussed its much rumoured plans to bring a number of its formerly Xbox-exclusive first-party games to PS5 and Switch.
Discussing Microsoft’s latest Game Pass figures, Spencer assured Totilo the 9m subscribers added to the service since January 2022 – when Microsoft announced Game Pass had amassed a total of 25m members – were “fully paid” and did not include promotional players. “Those are people,” Spencer reiterated, “fully paid subs.”
Spencer also insisted the number of Xbox Live Gold members now being counted as Game Pass subscribers following the service’s rebranding to Game Pass Core last year was “pretty small”, and that many of its new members have come via PC and cloud.
“When there’s a fixed number of console players on the planet,” he elaborated, “you’re not going to grow Game Pass forever by shipping just on consoles. So we’re seeing really significant growth on PC, which is great, and cloud.”
Today’s Game Pass update arrives alongside confirmation the subscription service “will continue to be only available on Xbox platforms” – a sentiment Microsoft has been pushing, alongside a number of other affirmative announcements, to assure worried Xbox owners their consoles won’t suddenly become redundant following today’s confirmation four first-party Xbox games are heading to PlayStation 5 and Switch.
The company has also announced Diablo 4’s impending Game Pass arrival – the first Activision Blizzard title to hit the service following Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of the publisher last year – and moved to assuage fan fears its multiplatform strategy will herald the end of its Xbox hardware business, with Xbox president Sarah Bond confirming Microsoft is currently working on a “next-generation” Xbox that’s aiming to deliver “the largest technical leap that you will have ever seen in a hardware generation.”
