Xbox Game Pass broke 35 million subscribers at some point

Xbox Game Pass subscribers may have broken 35 million, an update from a Microsoft employee's LinkedIn page indicates.

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An Xbox program manager may have inadvertently given an update on Game Pass subscriber numbers. According to the LinkedIn profile of Kevin K., a program manager for Microsoft, the Xbox Game Pass subscription service surpassed 35 million subscribers at some point.

"I managed live operations for Xbox Game Pass, ensuring seamless game title launches and meeting performance benchmarks. I led operational strategies across teams for a 0-1 product, driving subscriber growth from 0 to 35M+ worldwide," the profile reads.

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So let's put these these numbers into perspective a bit.

The last official update that Microsoft gave on Xbox Game Pass numbers was issued in February 2024, where Microsoft management had confirmed that there were 34 million Game Pass subscribers at the time.

This number of course included the transition of Xbox LIVE Gold members being recognized as Xbox Game Pass Core subscribers.

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There's just one critical thing we don't know: How recent the numbers are. Subscriber counts will fluctuate, sometimes dramatically, especially if they are content-driven subscriptions. There's a lot of "churn" with subscriptions, which is a term that describes behavior where consumers cancel subscriptions and move on to something else.

Given this, it's hard to chart growth of the Xbox Game Pass subscription, and it's even harder to say that Game Pass has only increased by 1 million subscribers from February 2024 to present day.

There's also some overlap with the numbers and it's hard to say who is exactly correct; for example, in late 2022, Sony had said that Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass subscription had 29 million subscribers, which was well over the 25 million subscriber count that Microsoft had reported at the time.

Then again, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella recently said that spending on video game subscriptions in the US had been relatively flat since 2021.

"US spending on video game subscriptions had been basically flat for years following 2020-21 growth, only boosted by 12% in Q4 thanks to CoD going to Game Pass," Piscatella said on Bluesky at the time, referring to Circana's data report from April.

"Subscriptions are certainly not THE future of gaming (although they can continue to be part of it)."