The number of Xbox Game Pass subscribers has fallen below 50% of its initial goal
The Xbox Game Pass subscription service from Microsoft reportedly serves approximately 30 million users. This figure, sourced by the Wall Street Journal, is significantly lower than the anticipated 77 million users projected by Microsoft for 2026 as revealed during legal proceedings related to its acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Back in September 2024, the membership count for Game Pass stood at roughly 34 million, as disclosed by former Xbox head, Sarah Bond, according to GamesIndustry.biz.
Confronting recent internal changes at Microsoft, including workforce reductions, the newly appointed CEO Asha Sharma confirmed via an email message that the company had staked its future on Game Pass, alongside a broadening of its content portfolio and cross-platform initiatives.
Sharma explained that although these ventures generated substantial value, their growth lagged behind expectations, weakening the company's core business as further investments and efforts were made. The industry also faces an unprecedented hardware crisis, prompting the need for a strategic reset of Xbox.
The subscriber base of Game Pass has fluctuated before; in early 2022, it reached 25 million members but soon dropped to 22 million, as disclosed in documents related to the Federal Trade Commission's case on Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
In 2025, the price of Game Pass was raised by 50%. However, after Sharma assumed the CEO role, she reduced the pricing, following internal feedback about affordability. This adjustment led to an increase in subscriptions, as Sharma revealed to The Verge.
Despite this, she admitted that growth slowed while membership cancellations increased after the changes last year. Nonetheless, post-price cut improvements in user retention and acquisition were noted, presenting an initial positive trend.
She iterated the importance of tackling ongoing challenges gradually, emphasizing that resolving them would require sustained effort over time to achieve stable growth.