Xbox Game Pass Reportedly Generated $2 Billion in Annual Revenue Between 2019 and 2021

While sustainability remains a mystery, Xbox Game Pass was wholly embraced by the market in years past, as it reportedly generated considerable revenue.

[Obscure_Observer]

Yes!

With more money made out of games on multiple platforms, Game Pass will only grow bigger and better!

[lodossrage]

You should really wait until that show profit before this is cheer worthy.

Every service brings in revenue. How much profit comes from it is where the sustainability will come into play
2 billion in revenue in 2019-2021 is great an and all. But what were the operating costs?

[CrashMania]

Yeah, there's a reason they never reveal Xbox profit numbers, and we all know what that reason is.

[Obscure_Observer]

"You should really wait until that show profit before this is cheer worthy."

Game Pass is alive and well since 2017 so its obviously profitable. And they do reveal profits for their investors and shareholders; you know, the people that matters in this particular regard.

The only thing I might wait is for a great line up of upcoming first and third party games day one on the service.

[Scissorman]

Profitability is going to be little to non-existent. Had the service been able to generate any meaningful profit, then we wouldn't be seeing every 1st Party Xbox title coming to PlayStation.

[badz149]

@Obsecure

Xbox is also still alive and kicking in 2025. Must be because it makes so much profits, right?

[Kyizen]

Exactly 2 billion revenue, not profit and Activision cost them 68.7 billion so...how many years to break even on that?

[Silly Mammo]

Hey! Be nice to Obscure. It's been a very difficult year for him trying to defend Xbox. Let him have this "win".

[Bathyj]

"Game Pass is alive and well since 2017 so its obviously profitable. "

You know Xbox as a company didn't make a dollar of profit until well into their second generation. And you can thank Don Mattrick for that, the guy you love to blame for everything that's wrong with Xbox not your lord and savior Peter Moore who you all hail as a hero now.

[Sharky231]

Revenue is different from profit. If Game Pass was doing what Microsoft wanted then Xbox wouldn’t be going multi platform. I really wish that they would say their real numbers. Not just some kind of spin that sounds good until you dig in. I’d be willing to bet it’s still losing money.

[Christopher]

Revenue is money taken in, not profit. This means 16.67m Game Pass users at only $10/month, even less at higher priced levels that actual offer game subscriptions. That's an overlap from last gen to this gen, which means most of this isn't about game pass so much as just people paying to play online. And those subscriptions are to afford the costs to keep things running, not to necessarily be a profit point (though, they probably made a small percentage off of it overall).

[crazyCoconuts]

To add to that, MS has to pay third party publishers as well. Didn't we have a report about that being $1B annually?

https://www.purexbox.com/ne...

[Tacoboto]

Add even more to that - gamers that take advantage of MS Rewards + Bing can rake in enough points to "buy" Game Pass Ultimate with only 12k MS Rewards Points.

I haven't paid for GPU in over a year and my membership goes to September currently. I redeemed a month just three weeks ago and am over halfway to the next redemption

[Christopher]

***Game Pass is alive and well since 2017 so its obviously profitable.***

That's not how that works. Xbox is being hugely propped up by Microsoft and as a division has lost money recently just due to the over $100b in studio purchases let alone eating a TON of costs to get people to switch over with lower pricing that only in the last two years saw increase to help prevent more losses.

It's a long road toward profit and, more importantly, market control in subscription gaming. They've been spreading the good will, though. Games on Steam, games on PS5. More profit to help them fuel the subscription plans.

[lodossrage]

I was just going to explain what profit was, but thanks to you I don't have to.

[Terry_B]

Realism is really not your strength.

[TheEroica]

Oh man, the Sony Defense Force is gonna come at you hard for your treasonous comments... How dare you have fun with day 1 bangers.... You really want Concord, duh.

[andy85]

Yep. Let's highlight the worst game in probably 20 years of exclusives as that's all they have. Forgetting all the other GOTY nominees 😂

[andy85]

That's a terrible number considering there's supposedly 30 million subs isn't it? It works out at $3 a month and we all know gamepass isn't that price. And a lot of prople use the rewards program to get free gamepass. Inflated sub numbers?

[blacktiger]

Revenue not profit

[Lightning77]

Those were in the dry years of Xbox. Plus their games are on PS now. Studio growth/health means more money to the studios means more GP grow also means more games for xbox ppl and PS ppl.

[Knushwood Butt]

'means more GP grow'.

How is GP supposed to grow when xbox sales are tanking?

MS has a target of 100 million subscribers. Will be interesting to see what the current numbers are, although oddly MS hasn't provided an update for a long time.

[Lightning77]

They're definitely not hitting that 100m subs. I don't know why they even said that.

Maybe not so much growth in terms of subs because they're not selling any consoles though the PC they've seen growth. Sustainability is what they're achieving. Because those games selling on PS will definitely help the studios immensely.

That or Increased GP prices which nobody wants but I think they're gonna do again anyway.

[originaljohn]

GP doesn't only exist on Xbox, they push it on PC, mobile and TV's via cloud. Those devices have a far wider reach than a standard console. I ultimately cancelled my GP sub as I simply wasn't using it and therefore had no need but don't be thinking GP and consoles sales are 1:1

[ravens52]

I would love to know the number of people who actually use gamepasss on mobile or tv.

[ABizzel1]

They’re not getting to 100m subs without coming to Nintendo and/or PlayStation, or being forced to create some free version / extremely cheap version with limited features.

[UltraYZU]

Even if that was profit and not revenue that would be so little.

But lets assume that 25% of that is profit is would take them 140 years to pay back ABK. Of course there is plenty of reason to believe that Game Pass is unprofitable and losing money.

And now we can mathematically see that Microsoft is misleading people about subscribers, they aren't quoting concurrent subscribers but total number of people who have ever subscribed, So if a person subbed in 2017 but canceled they are part of that 35m number Microsoft quoted

Much like in the 360 days when they would throw around subscriptions numbers and all the press for years kept saying it was Live Gold paid subscriptions until Microsoft finally revealed that it was total subscriptions including silver unpad subscriptions.

[Reaper22_]

You dont know what you're talking about.

[cloganart]

The question should be how much does it cost Microsoft to maintain Game Pass. Servers etc.

While there is money lost from individual sales of games, the library is so large that that may not matter.

[lodossrage]

@cloganart

Your comment is EXACTLY why I said people need to stop cheering about revenue until they start talking about profit first.

To be fair, nobody should be "cheering" a company in the first place, but that's a different argument.

But it's like some of these people don't realize that not only do they have to pay to maintain gamepass itself, but they have to pay for the maintenance of EVERY game on the service. And the newer the game is, the more it will cost, including their own published games. Which is why the Day 1 part of the service was a bad idea. Which even Microsoft realizes and that's why you can only get "day 1" games in the ultimate package now instead of everyone getting them like they initially said they would.

I don't expect people to be financial wizards on a game website, but a bit of basic economic knowledge WOULD be nice.

[attilayavuzer]

"But lets assume that 25% of that is profit is would take them 140 years to pay back ABK. "

That's not how investments work.

[Reaper22_]

Gamepass is profitable and a successful service. They are expected to make over 5 billion this year. Time to move on.

[D2niceforu]

Right this was infancy years. They are making way more now. More subs and higher prices

[repsahj]

$1B a year? So you need 69 years to recoup what you spent on the Activision buyout? XD

[thesoftware730]

Repsahj,

That is not how that works at all, but just for the sake of talk.

1.The report is not $1B, it's $2B.
2..They own King games, so tons of money from mobile(Cod mobile as well), candy crush and the like, which btw make more $$ than consoles.
3. Individual games sales on Xbox(not GP)
4. Individual games sales on PS, and PC.
5. MTX, sales on PC, PS, and Xbox
6. CoD makes billions on its own and it's on every system, not just GP..this article specifically is GP making $2B so all other revenue is in addition.

When you factor in all these things you can see that the "$69B" does not rest solely on the shoulder of GP. The fact that they are moving games on almost every platform, including mobile paints a way different picture than your faulty 69 years scenario.

[Chevalier]

Sony made $4 billion in a single year on Mobile with just Fate Stay which also branched off into anime, figures, manga and ton of merchandise too. What's your point?

[repsahj]

C'mon brother, that's is why they goin multi-plat because they cant with M$ only.

[thesoftware730]

Chevalier,

It wasn't a comparison to Sony at all.

And the point is clear, he cited GP as MS only way for them to make money back to cover the $69B they spent on A/B, which is 100% false. You are a smart person and you know that is false, so instead you made an assanine non factor Sony comment.

"C'mon brother, that's is why they goin multi-plat because they cant with M$ only".

That is my point lol, so clearly it's not all on GP...read my comment again.

[dveio]

Well, I perceive revenue as an important factor.

Because from revenue, you cover all the expenses.

So if, let's say, Sony are producing 10 AAA 1st party games within a span of one fiscal year (just for the means of an example), but only zero profit is left, that doesn't mean 30B worth of revenue wasn't important.

It was important to cover the on-going development expenses.

But the thing about Microsoft/Xbox is that we just don't know anything about their profits/losses.

Nothing. Nada. Nienté.

[anast]

The is before expenses have been subtracted. What's the profit?

[jznrpg]

It’s so high that they started selling games on a competitors platform

[anast]

Exactly

[Destiny1080]

is there even enough left over to cover phil's wages

no wonder all xbox exclusives are heading to playstation

[Toecutter00]

Between 2019 and 2021....couldn't have had something to do with a (checks notes) global pandemic, could it?

[rlow1]

Now that Nintendo is charging $80 for games and if successful the rest of the industry will have a high probability of following. Gamepass will become more important as gaming gets more expensive. With tariffs flying all over the place now it will only benefit services like Gamepass.

[Abear21]

And every consumer has zero to show for it aside from the time they spent. Day one releases on the service is dope, can’t deny that. At the same time every experience is a fart in the wind unless you ponied up and bought the game or finished it before M$ pulled it off the service. A rental service with stipulations is not my thing but I get why people enjoy it.
At least with PS Plus I have access to my library from years ago still. And if I’m going to be forced to pay for online, PS is obviously the lesser of the two evils as you keep what games they “give” you. I wish I could hit “pass” on games certain month and get a credit I could use on the store, or if I already bought the game.

[Extermin8or3_]

There is straight up no way it's profitable not without some seriously dubious exclusion of Dev costs of first party games being developed for it.

[Shane Kim]

You don't have to have a masters degree in economics to understand that if Game Pass was profitable, MS wouldn't end up putting their games on PS.

[Hedstrom]

Xbox Game Pass
Microsoft reported in February 2024 that Xbox Game Pass had 34 million "fully paid" subscribers across console, PC, and cloud platforms. This figure was shared by The Verge and reflects a significant increase from the 25 million reported in January 2022. The term "fully paid" suggests these are active, paying subscribers, though it includes those who were transitioned from Xbox Live Gold to Game Pass Core in 2023. Microsoft hasn’t provided a more recent breakdown since then, so as of April 6, 2025, the best estimate remains 34 million paying subscribers.

PlayStation Plus
Sony last officially reported PlayStation Plus subscriber numbers in their earnings release for Q2 FY22 (ending September 2022), stating 45.4 million subscribers across all tiers (Essential, Extra, and Premium). Earlier figures from April 2022 showed 47.7 million, indicating a slight decline over time. However, analyst estimates from Omdia in October 2023 suggested PlayStation Plus had grown to 50.1 million subscribers, a number echoed in posts on X and some gaming news outlets. Sony hasn’t confirmed this exact figure, but given the service’s historical strength (especially as it’s required for online play on PlayStation consoles), it’s a plausible estimate. As of April 6, 2025, we can reasonably estimate around 50 million paying subscribers, though this includes all tiers, with the majority likely on the base Essential tier.

Key Notes
Xbox Game Pass: The 34 million figure from 2024 is the most concrete recent data, but growth has reportedly slowed, and some subscribers may be on promotional deals (e.g., $1 trials) or using Microsoft Rewards to offset costs. Still, these are considered "fully paid" in Microsoft’s terms.

PlayStation Plus: The 50.1 million estimate isn’t directly from Sony but aligns with trends of PS Plus maintaining a lead over Game Pass. The service’s subscriber base benefits from being a near-requisite for online multiplayer on PS4 and PS5, unlike Game Pass, which is optional for Xbox users.

Conclusion
Xbox Game Pass: Approximately 34 million paying subscribers (as of February 2024).

PlayStation Plus: Approximately 50 million paying subscribers (estimated as of late 2023, likely still relevant in early 2025).

These numbers are the best available estimates based on official reports and credible analyst projections up to April 6, 2025. Both services may have fluctuated slightly since their last updates, but without newer official data, these figures provide a solid snapshot.

***************************** *************************
According to Grok

[Reaper22_]

Your informations is inaccurate. Satya reported GP has grown since that was reported. Mostly on the PC side. Gamepass offer more benefits than PS plus. Day one releases alone makes it better IMO. Ea play, PC are other positives..

[Hedstrom]

This is what AI concludes after scanning the internet.

[gold_drake]

and immediately spent more than 70 billion on playing monopoly. ha

[Reaper22_]

Still not as bad as the mega flop concord.

[gold_drake]

wat, no one was talking about that, get a grip