Phil Spencer gives important information about Game Pass. The future looks very interesting.
The Microsoft Game Pass service is profitable and currently generates about 15% of global revenue from Xbox content and services. The head of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer, shared information on the stage of The Wall Street Journal Tech Live conference.
Phil Spencer Shares Important Information About Game Pass
“Game Pass’s share of our total content and services revenue is probably 15%,”he explained to Sarah Needleman of The Journal. “I don’t think he takes more. I think 15% of global revenue is a big number, but I don’t think we’ll have a future where subscriptions are 50-70% of our revenue.”
Phil Spencer added that Microsoft has seen “incredible”growth lately on PC, with consoles slowing down mostly due to saturation. “At some point, you reached everyone who wants to subscribe to consoles,” he says. Microsoft announced a few days ago that PC Game Pass subscriptions jumped 159% year-over-year during Q1 2023. The Redmond-based firm also found that players are having more fun playing games on its Xbox Cloud Gaming platform. Phil Spencer then hinted that mobile would play a major role in the future of Game Pass.
The future looks very interesting
“If you bet long term, which is what we do, we can have access to players across all the platforms people play on – Android phones and iOS – we want to be in a good position with content, players, and the ability to take full advantage of them,” he explained, indirectly recalling that Microsoft wants to build an Xbox store that will be available on mobile devices.
Phil Spencer was also adamant that the price of Game Pass would rise at some point: “We kept our prices for our consoles, we kept our prices for games and our subscription,”he recalled. “I don’t think we can do this all the time.”
Companies like Microsoft rarely share numbers like those shared by Phil Spencer. It offers an interesting insight into how important services like Game Pass mean to the American giant and how executives see its evolution.