Subscribers’ gains would not be enough
Bloomberg went to investigate several sources to verify what could justify such an increase in the price of the Xbox Game Pass. It then emerged that Xbox would have skipped nearly $ 300 million that game sales could have generated Call of Duty last yearand this partly because of the fact that the license was placed within the Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft hoped that the inclusion of this series in its subscription increases the membership of the latter, but the increase in subscribers would not have been as large as expected, according to several sources.
Last year, IGN had pointed out that 82% of sales of the last Call of Duty had been carried out on the PlayStation consoles. Now that Xbox has Activision, it obviously affects a beautiful jackpot when the game is sold as well at PlayStation, but not as much as if the game was sold only on its consoles or if it caused an increase in subscriptions. An increase in subscribers had been noted with +16% around the release of the last Call of Duty, but it would not be obviously enough to compensate for the loss of sales.
This would explain today an increase in the price of the Xbox Game Pass, in order to guarantee more margin on the subscription. It remains to be seen if this increase will not on the contrary lead to a too strong refusal on the part of consumers.