Xbox Game Pass can reportedly cut away as much as 80% of a games premium sales on Xbox

When Xbox unveiled its new generation of subscription services with Xbox Game Pass in 2017, the appeal for players was immediately apparent. Pay a monthly fee and get an ever-growing library of games right at your fingertips. Even brand-new releases from Xbox’s first-party studios, at no extra cost. Like Netflix, but for games, and with limited-time promotions that made the cost of a Game Pass subscription as low as $1, Game Pass colloquially earned the title, ‘the best deal in gaming.’
For the players, that is. For game developers, the seven years since Game Pass’s launch haven’t been as rosy, and former head of GamesIndustry.Biz Christopher Dring recently outlined just how devastating Game Pass can be for games sales, cutting away as much as 80% of a game’s premium sales on Xbox platforms.
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Subscriptions over sales
In a Q&A session hosted by InstallBase, Dring answered a variety of questions related to the games industry, pulling on his decade-plus years of experience covering games and most recently his time as the head of trade publication GamesIndustry.Biz. While at GI.Biz, Dring was the go-to source for game sales data regarding physical game sales in the UK and EU, breaking down reports from GSD and GfK for readers to keep track of what’s selling each and every month (minus November 2024, where Dring admits in the Q&A he simply missed due to “a mix of holidays and myself being preoccupied with leaving GI”).
All that is to say that Dring has been keeping a keen eye on game sales and their trends for years, and has had direct access to see how Xbox Game Pass has impacted the sales of games on Xbox consoles. So when Dring is asked about whether a perceived sentiment that subscription services are no longer these “purely additive” features as the user asking the question puts it, he brings up a startling number.
“Anecdotally, games that are in Game Pass can expect to lose around 80% of its expected premium sales on Xbox,” Dring says. “That’s the figure that gets thrown around a lot. It’s less if it’s a big mainstream release, but generally…look at how Hellblade 2 charted. Or where Indiana Jones came. Or even Starfield. Game Pass clearly hurt sales of those titles on Xbox.”
Game Pass subscriptions help Xbox and Microsoft, but that can be different for game developers, so to lose up to 80% of a games premium sales on one platform is a huge chunk of change missing. Granted, Xbox pays out a big lump-sum to developers to get games on Game Pass, but that lump-sum could never beat the potential earnings of premium game sales over time.
Some good, some bad
It’s not all doom-and-gloom for games entering Game Pass though, as Dring also points out that “If it’s a game on multiple platforms, it can be beneficial. The surge in players on Xbox can have a strong impact on sales on PlayStation, for instance.”
“And if some of those people decided to get Call of Duty this year via Game Pass, and those very same people took the opportunity to play some other Game Pass games, games they wouldn’t have otherwise played…it’s hard to argue that’s a bad thing.” – Christopher Dring
He continues, “I am actually torn up on subscription. I believe it can lead to lost revenue, and services like this make it harder for everyone else. Try being an indie game on Xbox right now that’s not on Game Pass. But also, getting people to play your game in 2024/2025 is so, so, so hard. And subscription gets games in front of lots of people. We know from data that there are a lot of people that only play Call of Duty. And if some of those people decided to get Call of Duty this year via Game Pass, and those very same people took the opportunity to play some other Game Pass games, games they wouldn’t have otherwise played…it’s hard to argue that’s a bad thing.”
Dring points out the crux of the debate regarding whether Game Pass and subscriptions like that are a good thing. For players, as stated earlier, the benefit is clear, even with recent price-hikes that still leave a bad taste in the mouth of those who’ve been subscribed to Game Pass for years. For developers, it’s clearly much more of a mixed bag.