Xbox Game Pass hits 10 million subscribers

• April 29, 2020

Microsoft says more than 10 million people now subscribe to Xbox Game Pass, its subscription service offering access to a growing selection of PC and Xbox Games. The service launched in 2017 with more than 100 Xbox games for $9.99 per month. Recently, Microsoft began launching a PC version of the service, which is currently available at an introductory price of $4.99 per month. Microsoft also offers a bundled subscription that includes access to both Xbox games, PC games, and Xbox Live for $14.99 per month.

The statistics came as part of Microsoft’s Q3 2020 earnings report this afternoon, and it’s the first time we’ve seen Xbox Game Pass numbers. Microsoft says that gaming in particular “benefited from increased engagement” due to stay-at-home orders. This led to “record engagement,” according to Microsoft communications chief Frank Shaw. Xbox Live also saw nearly 90 million monthly users this quarter. Microsoft’s games streaming service, Project xCloud, hit “100s of thousands” of active users across its seven preview countries.

While the coronavirus pandemic has led to huge disruptions around the globe, it’s also had the effect of hugely increasing usage of at-home work and entertainment services. Microsoft is evidently among the beneficiaries of that trend, but today’s numbers suggest that some of its gaming services — Game Pass in particular — had already been growing to far larger numbers than expected. EA’s competing subscription services, EA Access and Origin Access, hit 5 million subscribers last year, showing Microsoft has a significant lead.

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Microsoft says more than 10 million people now subscribe to Xbox Game Pass, its subscription service offering access to a growing selection of PC and Xbox Games. The service launched in 2017 with more than 100 Xbox games for $9.99 per month. Recently, Microsoft began launching a PC version of…