Xbox games included in the Game Pass subscription lose up to 80% of their potential sales. This was reported by business journalist Christopher Dring during a Q&A session.

“Anecdotally, games that are in Game Pass can expect to lose around 80% of its expected premium sales on Xbox. That’s the figure that gets thrown around. It’s less if it’s a big mainstream release, but generally… look at how low Hellblade 2 charted. Or where Indiana Jones came. Or even Starfield. Game Pass clearly hurt sales of those titles on Xbox,” Dring said.

At the same time, Dring notes that if games are not exclusive to Microsoft consoles but are released on different platforms, this strategy can have its advantages. According to him, a large number of players on Xbox can significantly affect sales on PlayStation.

The journalist also notes that he is skeptical about subscription services because, in addition to losing sales revenue, they make it difficult for smaller projects to attract more players. However, given the large number of games released every year (for example, Steam had almost 19 thousand new releases in 2024), including a game in a subscription service makes it more accessible to a wider audience.

“We know from data that there are a lot of people that only play Call of Duty. And if some of those people decided to get Call of Duty this year via Game Pass, and those very same people took the opportunity to play some other Game Pass games, games they wouldn’t have otherwise played… it’s hard to argue that’s a bad thing,” Dring added.