If there were still any people with doubts about the importance of Xbox Game Pass for Microsoft, I want to think that those doubts were completely mitigated yesterday, following the news of the purchase of Activision Blizard by Microsoft. An informative bombshell that has already had a direct impact on its competition, with Sony as the main example of this, and whose echoes will undoubtedly continue to resonate for some time in the sector.
This is not Microsoft’s first operation in this regard to, among other things, reinforce the increasingly interesting Xbox Game Pass catalog, actually Not even a year and a half has passed since another operation that also left us speechless everyone, the purchase of Zenimax, with which the catalogs of Bethesda, Id Software and Obsidian joined the Redmond game subscription service offer.
But the service lives not only from large studios, another of the strengths of Xbox Game Pass is that, as we have already been able to verify on multiple occasions in the past, also independent studio games have a place in its catalog. And it is that this is another of the objectives that were marked in Redmond from the first moment, that the offer was substantially varied, with all the genres represented in its offer.
Monthly we see how new titles are added and, although there are also some that leave, as a general rule the balance always shows a positive result, with more games entering than leaving Xbox Game Pass. As proof of this, tomorrow, Hitman Trilogy, Rainbow Six Extraction, Pupperazzi and WindJammers 2, among others, will debut on the service. Every fortnight, Microsoft informs about these catalog extensions.
In addition, in its Ultimate mode, the service also provides access to its cloud gaming platform, Xbox Cloud, which includes an important part of the Xbox Game Pass catalogue, and which, for example, allows us to enjoy some classic Xbox titles, such as the Fable saga, on PC. And I know of more than one person for whom this possibility alone makes the service so interesting as to subscribe to it.
And given the numbers, it seems that Microsoft’s strategy is paying off. Since the launch of the Xbox Game Pass version for PC we have been able to see sustained growth, with some peaks such as the one that occurred with the launch of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Consequently, as we can read in MSPoweruser, the service has just reached a very important milestone, and that is that Xbox Game Pass would have reached 25 million subscribers, a number that was made public at the same time as Activision Blizzard’s acquisition.
And this is an important detail, because if this operation is finally confirmed, and Activision Blizzard games begin to reach Xbox Game Pass (something may still have to take a few months until it happens), It will not be surprising that these numbers grow even more, confirming the success of those from Redmond in launching this service.
