Xbox games in Game Pass ‘can lose 80% of premium sales’, it’s claimed

Xbox games included in the Game Pass subscription service can reportedly expect to lose up to 80% of their predicted premium sales.

That’s according to business journalist Christopher Dring, who added that, for multi-platform titles, inclusion in Game Pass can drive PS5 sales.

Speaking as part of a Q&A on the InstalBase forums, Dring was asked his thoughts about Game Pass and its impact on the market. 

“Anecdotally, games that are in Game Pass can expect to lose around 80% of its expected premium sales on Xbox,” Dring wrote.

“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.

“But… if it’s a game on multiple platforms, it can be beneficial. That surge in players on one Xbox can have a strong impact on sales on PlayStation, for instance.”

Dring went on to say that he feels “torn” on the effectiveness of subscription models and it’s highly dependent on the genre and type of game. “Try being an indie game on Xbox right now that’s not on Game Pass…”

“But also, getting people to play your game in 2024/2025 is so, so, so hard. And subscription gets games in front of lots of people,” he continued.

“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.”

This week, sales data revealed that video game revenue in the UK dropped 4.4% to £4.6bn in 2024. This was driven mainly by a collapse in physical game revenue in the region, with just £324.4 million generated by sales of boxed games in the UK last year. That’s a drop of nearly 35% over 2023.