Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscription service apparently has around 30 million users
That’s according to the Wall Street Journal, which reports that a person familiar with the situation said that the service boasts in the region of 30 million subscribers. That’s well below the 77 million-user projection that Microsoft apparently had for Game Pass by 2026, revealed in the legal proceedings surrounding its mega-acquisition of Activision Blizzard
At the last official count, in September 2024, Game Pass had around 34 million members, according to then-Xbox president Sarah Bond
In a recent email to staff announcing deep cuts at Xbox, new CEO Asha Sharma said that the company had “bet on Game Pass” as well as “multi-platform and a broader portfolio of content”
“While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected,” she wrote
“As that happened, our core business weakened, and we added more teams, more investment, and more time, hoping for a better outcome. And now the industry is facing the most severe hardware crisis in its history. We must reset Xbox.”
It is worth noting that this isn’t the first time that Game Pass has seen a dip in user numbers; at the start of 2022, the service boasted 25 million subscribers, only for it to have 22 million a few months later, according to internal documents released as part of the FTC’s lawsuit over Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard
In 2025, Microsoft increased the cost of Game Pass by 50%. Shortly after taking over as CEO, Sharma cut the price of Game Pass, following a memo saying that the service had become “too expensive for players”.She later told The Verge that this dip in pricing had resulted in a boost to users
“Growth slowed down and subscriber loss accelerated after the pricing and SKU changes last year,” she said
“Since our price reduction, we have seen acquisitions grow and retention improve, which is a good first step.”
“We will not solve this in one moment or one launch. We will have to outwork the problem in front of us in our path to restore durable growth.”
