Is that good?
A new Bloomberg report based on interviews with former Microsoft employees has offered more fuel for speculation about the continued viability of Game Pass, including Microsoft’s own alleged estimate for how much sales revenue Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 lost by being on the subscription service.
Unlike Steam, which offers its own real-time metrics while also being monitored by third parties like SteamDB, Game Pass is a black box, with only periodic updates from Microsoft—or insider information like that obtained by Bloomberg—to offer an impression of the service’s health. Microsoft says it is growing and popular, but Xbox has been on a steady drumbeat of mass layoffs and studio closures in recent years.
One of the employees speaking to Bloomberg cited the $300 million figure as an internal estimate. I’ve seen some skepticism about the figure, and a comparison to how publishers count every pirate download of a game as a missed sale when prosecuting pirates or commenting publicly on piracy’s impact, but I don’t think that quite maps on to what’s going on here.
