Following on from Microsoft raising the price of Game Pass Ultimate by 50% – a move that feels like an admission that the subscription service is losing money – a new report has come out that claims putting Call of Duty on the service cost $300m in lost sales.
That’s according to Cecilia D’Anastasio of Bloomberg, who talked to seven current and former employees of Microsoft. One of them informed Bloomberg that Microsoft estimated it had lost more than $300m in sales across console and PC by putting Call of Duty on to Game Pass last year. For those wondering, that’s around 4.2 million copies, assuming each was sold for $70, and you don’t count any special editions and such.
However, we don’t know how many people subscribed to Game Pass in order to play the newest CoD or upgraded to the highest tier, making it hard to judge whether Microsoft deems those lost sales worthwhile or not. All we know is that they are sticking with the strategy, because CoD is scheduled to release on Game Pass Ultimate again this year.
The purchase of Activision-Blizzard and subsequent move to put Call of Duty on to Game Pass was widely seen as a way to significantly boost subscriber numbers, which had been slowing down for years. Microsoft don’t provide any official subscriber numbers or reveal copies of games sold these days, so we cannot know for sure, but the massive price hike of Ultimate seems like another tacit admission that Game Pass is still bleeding money. Which is hardly surprising – we all knew this must be the case, and Microsoft has been very careful to never state that the service is making money.
It begs the question, where does Game Pass go from here? Xbox has built itself around the service and the idea that all of its first-party games release straight onto it, so they can’t back down now, hence the price increase. But if the recent surge of people looking to cancel is anything to go by, their numbers might take such a big hit that something will need to be done.
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