I feel like this isn’t the first time I’ve felt compelled to write how good Xbox Game Pass is, but it feels a little different this time.
Last winter, I wrote about how Xbox was enjoying some huge positive momentum going into the holiday season. Call of Duty launched straight into Xbox Game Pass for the first time, and a variety of home-grown exclusives like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle really started to deliver strong critical reception for the brand.
I noted back then that Xbox had all the pieces in play to have a strong 2025 as well, with games like Avowed, DOOM: The Dark Ages, South of Midnight, and others slated for the calendar year. Fast forward to Spring 2025, and it feels like the content vision Xbox has worked meticulously hard to put together has well and truly come to fruition.
It comes on the back of recent comments from Xbox lead Phil Spencer that, “Xbox Game Pass isn’t for everyone,” however, which could indicate that despite the absolute surfeit of content, might there be some kind of limit?
You can potentially get a hint about Microsoft’s strategy around Xbox Game Pass when you look at the types of content being pushed, and, more controversially, how expanding to other platforms like PlayStation has become inescapable.
Something for everyone, everywhere, at all times
One thing I try to do more and more is escape the echo chamber that algorithms curate for us, especially when gauging sentiment. I don’t think it’s any secret that Xbox is often the target of attacks ranging from casual ridicule to the hypertoxic from platform fanboys — but it’s not always the loud minority that decides upon the success or failure of a thing. If you took critic reception of the Minecraft movie in a vacuum, you’d never assume it would be potentially on track to make a billion dollars at the box office.
Indeed, Xbox Game Pass has at least roughly 34 million subscribers per last reporting, assuming it hasn’t contracted. A report from The Information cited previously that Microsoft wants Xbox Game Pass to hit 100 million subscribers by 2030 — a figure that seems somewhat unlikely in my view, but it won’t be for lack of trying.
Indeed, in the space of a month, there’s more content than ever, more features than ever, and more perks than ever on Xbox Game Pass. We have DOOM: The Dark Ages and Towerborne in the near future. We have critically acclaimed third-party titles like Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 and Blue Prince launching only recently. We’ve had gaming’s worst kept secret: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion casually joining the fray, as well as classics like Diablo 3 and Grand Theft Auto V. There are new perks for free-to-play games like Overwatch 2 and Heroes of the Storm. There’s buy-to-own games in Xbox Cloud Gaming, which just expanded to LG smart TVs.
With the absolute glut of content and new features hitting the service, it’s utterly undeniable how much value is on offer here. Xbox fans have always been on board with Game Pass generally, but anecdotally, I’ve seen communities online that are typically hostile to Xbox break rank to praise the service in recent weeks. The nostalgia bomb that is Oblivion seems to have been a particularly strong catalyst for this.
If Microsoft still has a goal of hitting 100 million subscribers, finding this upswell of grassroots interest in Xbox Game Pass could be exactly what the platform needs to cut through the zeitgeist and establish itself in the mainstream.
I criticized Microsoft a bit last week for opting to shadow drop Oblivion on top of games like Towerborne and Clair Obscur, but perhaps I was too harsh, and thinking too inwardly.
Obviously, there’s going to be a ton of overlap over the biggest games like Oblivion, Clair Obscur, and DOOM, but they’re also quite different games as well, and not only in terms of genre. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, being turn based, is also a supremely good candidate for cloud gaming, opposed to DOOM’s demanding rapidity. Towerborne’s accessible, but deep side-scrolling combat with fixed camera perspective will also make it a good candidate for cloud gaming. These types of games might also be better for the lower-power PC gaming handhelds on offer too.
When I spoke of echo chambers, that also reflects the echo chamber of how many of us choose to play. Xbox Game Pass not only represents genre diversity, but increasingly, modality diversity. But, I think discussions around Xbox Game Pass, at least for now, revolve around content.
It leaked a fair but, but the “surprise” of a high-quality Oblivion remaster shut down any negative speculation, and as a by product, seems to have elevated discussions of Xbox Game Pass on top as a result. With Nintendo seeking to raise the base price of premium games to $80, it seems entirely likely that Game Pass will become an increasingly attractive option for those seeking value.
Can Xbox Game Pass really hit a 100 million subscribers by 2030?
One of the big existential issues facing the video game industry is finding truly new users. Social media and streaming services like Netflix have been growing faster than gaming as an overall industry, leaving platform holders to figure out how best to find new growth. For Microsoft and PlayStation, that has included stepping outside of their console ecosystems to target PC.
With the absolutely vast amount of content now being produced, Microsoft has essentially found itself in the enviable position of having too much content. Restricted to Xbox only, cannibalization would be absolutely rife, given that Xbox Series X|S stock seems to be globally bottlenecked for whatever reason. I constantly get DMs about stock levels from different regions. The Xbox Series X is in stock at Amazon UK right now, but the disc-version is seemingly sold out at Amazon US, save for resellers and used options as of writing.
This stock bottle neck has led Microsoft to pursue new platforms to find users more aggressively than PlayStation so far, but both are expected to launch handheld Switch-like consoles as part of their next-gen hardware offering. And both are developing cloud gaming platforms too.
With Xbox’s games being less “exclusive” than ever, can Xbox Game Pass itself evolve to be “the” exclusive? In a world where Nintendo tries to push platforms to reach for $80 per game, can Xbox Game Pass cut through as a value offering? Is the answer more nostalgic remaster shadow drops? Even more content?
As I noted earlier, Xbox lead Phil Spencer said in an interview recently that Xbox Game Pass isn’t designed for everybody, but assuming the goal of 100 million users was true, surely it would behove them to broaden its appeal as much as possible. With the diversity of content, accessible endpoints, and new perks for free-to-play games, it certainly seems like that’s the current strategy.
With Xbox Game Pass well and truly hitting its stride with regard to content, I’m more intrigued than ever about its growth. But it certainly seems like it has turned a big corner with broader awareness right now — and we’re not even half way through the year. The best is still yet to come, and that’s crazy to think about.
