The Microsoft And Activision Merger Has Revealed How Much Money Xbox Game Pass Makes
Brazil became the second country to approve Microsoft's merger with Activision Blizzard last week, following approval from Saudi Arabia in August. But Microsoft is waiting on decisions from respective market regulators from the UK, US, and EU, so it's by no means a done deal yet.
The process is throwing up some juicy details. When Brazil's Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) published its report setting out its reasons for approving the deal, it revealed how much money Microsoft is making from Xbox Game Pass (TweakTown via Forbes).
Related: Microsoft’s Acquisition Of Activision Blizzard Is Seismic, But The Crown In The Deal Might Be King
According to the CADE report, we learn that Xbox Game Pass generated $2.9 billion from consoles in 2021, while from publicly available data we know that Microsoft's Xbox gaming division as a whole generated $16.28 billion in the same calendar year. Note that the first figure doesn't include PC Game Pass. We also know that Xbox Game Pass subscribers reached 25 million last year.
While Xbox Game Pass accounted for 18 percent of total Xbox revenue last year, and 23 percent of Microsoft's games and services revenue ($12.6 billion), the money generated by this division of Microsoft is a very small part of its overall business. Microsoft's total revenue for calendar year 2021 was $184.9 billion, with Xbox Game Pass accounting for just 1.57 percent of the company's overall revenue over that period.
In the same CADE report we get estimates of how much of the market the likes of Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and EA have carved out from "multi-game subscription services for consoles". The table has Nintendo Switch Online on 10-20 percent of the market with revenues of $932 million,
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