{"id":472979,"date":"2025-10-04T06:46:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T06:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/472979\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T06:46:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T06:46:14","slug":"xbox-squandered-over-300-million-putting-call-of-duty-in-game-pass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/472979\/","title":{"rendered":"Xbox Squandered Over $300 Million Putting Call of Duty in Game Pass"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Xbox<\/a>Image: Push Square<\/p>\n

Xbox announced a remarkable 50% price increase<\/a> to Game Pass<\/strong><\/a> this week, underlining an accusation it\u2019s so frequently rebuffed \u2013 that the service is simply not sustainable.<\/p>\n

Now a report from Bloomberg<\/a>, citing former employees who asked not to be identified, reveals that the Redmond firm lost over $300 million releasing last year\u2019s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6<\/a> directly into the subscription.<\/p>\n

The expense has been calculated based on expected lost sales across Xbox consoles and PC, where the game was available to download day one as part of Microsoft\u2019s service.<\/p>\n

In the US, PlayStation platforms accounted for an outrageous 82% of all full-price launch month sales<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Offsetting that, overall US video game subscription spend increased just 16% year-over-year during the month of Black Ops 6\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n

Analyst firm Aldora\u2019s founder Joost Van Dreunen observed:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cGame Pass hasn\u2019t delivered the explosive growth Microsoft anticipated post-Activision, and they\u2019ve realised their infrastructure costs don\u2019t align with their pricing model.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As reported earlier this week<\/a>, Game Pass Ultimate \u2013 the only tier of Microsoft\u2019s subscription which still includes day one games on console \u2013 will now cost $29.99 per month. While it offers a different slate of perks, Sony\u2019s highest priced subscription PS Plus Premium<\/a> costs just $17.99 per month.<\/p>\n

PlayStation, to its credit, repeatedly said that giving away full-price first-party games as part of a subscription was simply not sustainable<\/a>. It was criticised at times for making the comments, but its perspective has since been proven sound.<\/p>\n

Microsoft hasn\u2019t provided an update on the total number of Game Pass subscribers since 2024, when it revealed it had 34 million active subscribers. It\u2019s worth noting that it rebranded Xbox Live as Game Pass to give the service a significant shot in the arm.<\/p>\n

Despite all of this, speaking at the Tokyo Game Show<\/strong><\/a> prior to this week\u2019s price increases, Xbox\u2019s Sarah Bond insisted yet again<\/a> that the service is profitable, although would only quote its $5 billion revenue to support her claim.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been increased pressure from the upper-echelons of Microsoft since its unprecedented near-$70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard to improve the Xbox division\u2019s profitability, and we\u2019re slowly starting to see the realities of that bite.<\/p>\n

[source bloomberg.com<\/a>]<\/p>\n

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Related Games<\/dt>\n
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See Also<\/dt>\n
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\"Sammy<\/p>\n

As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He\u2019s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image: Push Square Xbox announced a remarkable 50% price increase to Game Pass this week, underlining an accusation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[513,1207,806,53,16,15,54],"class_list":{"0":"post-472979","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-activision","9":"tag-call-of-duty","10":"tag-industry","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-xbox-game-studios"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115314556247225267","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}