Uncle revealed that Game Pass user's churn rate is very high after one month of subscription

2025-07-10 20:24:11|Myriagame |source：minecraft skins

According to reliable uncle SneakersSo's revelation on the foreign game forum NeoGAF, Microsoft's Game Pass user churn rate is "unreasonably high". He also said that Microsoft plans to gradually give up Xbox in the next decade.

User LuckyLuke asked: Can you talk to us about the future of Game Pass? To be honest, I can't see any connection with the future of Xbox.It feels like a trap they set themselves and is hard to get rid of now.

SneakersSo: To be honest, I can't see how it can adapt to the future positioning of Xbox.Now this thing is more like a hole that Microsoft dug for itself, but it ends up stepping in, and it is difficult to climb out.

But I don't think this is a difficult situation.The subscription service Game Pass has not actually achieved any substantial growth.The last time I was a little bit of a sudden, it was when "Call of Duty" was launched last year, but the churn rate of GP was too high, and that wave of traffic was quickly digested.Microsoft itself does not expect the subsequent CoD to bring a similar increase, because the "freshness" has passed and the popularity of Xbox consoles is still regressing.At this stage, the proportion of host users is as high as 90%, and the proportion of PC users is minimal.

You said that GP can no longer keep up with the current development direction of Xbox, I think it is right.This service was originally intended to create market impact on the PS5 and XSX|S release nodes, and to break the solid host market structure and stimulate growth.But the GP model has completely destroyed the purchasing habits of Xbox console users in a sense, which is worth noting.

But I won’t go off topic for now, just talk about what the future of Game Pass you asked about will be like.

Microsoft decided to promote its own games to platforms outside the Xbox ecosystem. One of the important starting points is: selling games in places without GP services will have higher profits."Raptors of the Lost Ark" is a very successful example.Once Microsoft internally decided to promote the "Project Latitude" (cross-platform strategy), the fantasy of "bringing GP to Steam, PSN or Nintendo platform" was directly killed and has never been mentioned yet.

At this time, a key point came - Microsoft's future direction is to gradually guide the traditional console ecosystem users to games using the Windows Store version or Steam version, that is, gradually weaken the dependence on Xbox SKU (special console version games).Game Pass basically serves Xbox SKUs. As such SKUs gradually withdraw in the future, the GP service will naturally become marginalized unless the user growth of PC Game Pass can keep up.

One of the data they are very concerned about now is: how many host players will buy new hosts in the next console generation, start using the Windows platform version, or subscribe to GP through the Windows Store to play first-party games.But the problem is that as projects and studios are constantly being cut, the "cost-performance ratio" of GP is gradually declining.I personally don’t think that after 2027, Microsoft will have a intensive output content year like 2025/2026.Even if production has increased in the past two years, there is no essential solution to their user retention and growth problems.

One point I particularly want to see how they deal with is that Microsoft recently integrated Xbox Live and Game Pass into one service, which is to increase the number of GP's superficial subscribers, and at the same time, it can also increase the subscription price of host users.But if the new generation of Xbox consoles adopt Windows OS and allow users to access Steam or Epic game libraries, it is difficult for you to say with confidence: If you want to get online, you have to pay the GP money.Microsoft has not finalized how to solve this problem, but I guess if they really decide to cancel the limit on GP subscriptions to connect to the Internet, it will undoubtedly give GP a reprieve and will also push the hardware price higher.

By then, if Game Pass wants to survive, it must turn a large number of host players into Windows Store users - but this conversion has basically failed so far.

Let me talk about another question: Why do big companies always bet on those 3A games with explosive budgets? Indeed, occasionally they will produce small-cost, purely passion-making games like "Pentiment", but most of the time they spend a lot of money to make "heavy bombs".

Why not learn to diversify investment? For example, do some projects with medium budgets or even low cost? After all, sometimes a small team of only a few people can make big independent games.Even if it is not sold well, it will not be the kind of "nuclear explosion site" that has been developed in seven years and burned out $100 million.

Your idea is actually very reasonable.Especially when you say you work in the fast-moving consumer goods industry, your big companies will build a complete set of brands, from high-end to entering the dollar store - yes, you may not be able to do extreme luxury, but the coverage is very wide.Large brands invest a lot, and small products are divided into small ones, but they all have resources and places to stay.

Why doesn’t the game industry do this? There are many superficial reasons, such as “economic scale”, “scarcity of content”, and “brand risk”.But in the end, it is actually two words: greed.However, this kind of "greed" often does not seem evil on the surface, and its manifestation is driven by KPI, profit margin, shareholder return rate, etc.Many developers themselves also hope to make small and beautiful works, because small projects are often experimental fields for gameplay innovation.But the problem is that what is particularly serious in the West is that the structure of game development has not been modified for decades and still uses the model of the 2000s, and the result is that the development cost is getting higher and higher.

But there is no hope.For example, the "Expedition No. 33" I have always mentioned is this year's annual game, not only because it is fun in itself, but also because its development model may be a model for the sustainability of the Western development system.Their development method is controllable in budget and efficient in processes, but the final product looks almost 3A texture, and it is said that as long as you sell less than one million copies, you can get the money back.

Can you imagine? A work that is almost as good as the art level of "Horizon" is not a big gambling project that burns hundreds of millions of dollars and puts down all its wealth.Many developers are actually studying how they do it, and hope that they can follow this path.

He also added: "Even in the scenario where "players buy games at full price", most people will not actually open up the game, and they can't even play half of it. Although I haven't specifically checked the data recently, I have studied it in a wave earlier, and at that time there were a large number of 3A masterpieces with completion rates of less than 50%. BioWare has talked about this issue before, and it seemed that it was in the development stage of Mass Effect 2 or 3.

On Xbox, since the introduction of Game Pass, the overall completion rate of the game has continued to decline.Many developers and publishers have noticed this, and there are many different opinions on the reasons behind it, but the most basic logic is actually very simple: there are too many games in the service, and it is too convenient for users to jump around.Can't beat the boss? I'm frustrated? It doesn't matter - I just pretend to be a special masterpiece and play it, there is no need to refund at all, and I don't need to "persist" because you don't pay the specific money or sunk costs for this game at all.Some achievements only require players to advance to nodes of about 10%, but now even the achievement rate of such achievements is very low - although the initial player volume brought by Game Pass is very large, no one can actually play.

Some of the things that Microsoft CFO Tim Stuart said recently are not lies, but he did not tell the complete truth.He said Game Pass "brings value", which sounds good, but how do you calculate the "value"? Many times it depends on whether these GP games have increased the usage rate of other Microsoft businesses, such as Azure cloud services, Azure computing power metrics, etc.As long as the "usage rate" of these businesses is stimulated, it can be said that GP "creates value".Moreover, Microsoft also has many ways to avoid financial statements, such as not counting the R&D costs of some core games into GP expenses - although the main users of these games are playing in GP, ​​the costs are hidden.

I want to make it clear that I do not oppose the Game Pass service.Actually, I think it would be very beneficial if there are GP-like services that are specifically for old games or independent games, especially for those small teams.Sony has made a lot of money now with the high-end membership version of PS+. The difference is that they will never put the first-party new work, Day 1, on the service, and they also clearly say that they will not do this in the future.

The entire game industry is actually a market where "everyone can copy whoever makes money".If Game Pass is really the "revolutionary business model" that Microsoft once said, then you should have seen Sony, Nintendo and third-party publishers follow the trend - what's the result? No one did that.If this model was really profitable, Microsoft would have pushed GP to Steam, PSN and even Nintendo stores long ago, but you can see that they would rather let you buy games on these platforms at full price, even if you give up 30% of the share to the platform, you would rather use GP subscription to let you play.Why? Because the former can directly drive revenue, while the latter is a long-term loss and gaining publicity.

You mentioned the high-priced game market on PlayStation, and you can actually talk about it by the way.Although you seem to be using a relatively broad market indicator, don't forget that Sony's own financial report clearly states: Digital game sales on PlayStation Network rose by 5% year-on-year last year.A large part of their revenue is indeed sold by the game itself.As for the decline in some game sales, it is purely because Sony has not released many new works during that period, which is a completely independent issue, and they also said that this gap will be made up in the next few years.

As for whether "Raiders of the Lost Ark" will be sequeled by the green light, I think it's too early to draw a conclusion now.If it is another publisher, the problem may be smaller.But even if the PS5 version has gained popularity, it may not be enough to offset the large amount of authorization paid to Disney.Especially now, Microsoft almost beat the master to death by cutting projects and layoffs. Whoever was cut depends entirely on the atmosphere that day.Even if players buy it after the DLC is over, they may not be able to decide to continue, because the authorization fund from Disney alone may have crushed the entire project.”

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