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Most Xbox Game Pass subscribers pay full price

Court documents also show Game Pass had almost double the userbase as Xbox Live Gold in April 2022

The majority of Xbox Game Pass subscribers pay full price and use the service on console.

That's according to a heavily redacted Microsoft slide deck, spotted by Tweaktown, which was among the latest wave of court documents to be released from the platform holder's legal battle against the Federal Trade Commission.

Towards the end of the deck, Microsoft gave an overview of its digital gaming ecosystem as of April 2022, which showed that of the 33.6 million subscriptions on its Xbox consoles, 21.9 million were for Game Pass (excluding PC), with the remaining 11.7 million being Xbox Live Gold.

Since Microsoft has announced Game Pass had a total of 25 million subscribers just a few months before, more than 20% of the service's users were on console.

The company also declared that Game Pass Net Rev/Sub (net revenue per subscription) was $9.26 – just shy of the $9.99 price tag, suggesting most subscribers pay full price. This has grown 14% over the previous quarter and 12% over the previous year.

By comparison, Microsoft was receiving $6.10 for each Xbox Live Gold subscription.

The Gold subscription is due to be retired soon and replaced with Xbox Game Pass Core, with current subscribers shifted to this new tier. This is expected to significantly increase Game Pass' overall userbase.

The slide also shows Xbox Live had 112 million quarterly active users at the time. Of these, 51.3 million were on console, and 48.7 million of those were actively playing games.

39.7 million were classed as 'monetised users,' of which 1.5 million were new meaning 35% of Xbox Live users are spending additional money on Xbox.

Other news that emerged from the latest court documents released includes Microsoft planning to release its next Xbox console in 2028.

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James Batchelor avatar
James Batchelor: James is Editor-in-Chief at GamesIndustry.biz, and has been a B2B journalist since 2006. He is author of The Best Non-Violent Video Games
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