Xbox Game Pass Has Reportedly Lost 4 Million Subscribers Since 2024

Xbox Game Pass has reportedly lost millions of subscribers since Microsoft last said that the game subscription service had 34 million paying members in 2024. According to separate reports in The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, Game Pass now has 30 million subscribers, 4 million fewer than it did two years ago. The revelation comes after Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced a major restructuring plan at the company this week and admitted that Game Pass, along with other Xbox initiatives, “did not grow at the pace we expected.”

Microsoft went all in on Game Pass when the subscription service was launched in 2017 under then-Xbox CEO Phil Spencer. Promising first-party games on day one at a low monthly subscription cost, the service was often referred to as the best deal in gaming.

In the years since, however, the Xbox Game Pass has fallen well short of Microsoft's expectations. Documents from the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) lawsuit over the company's acquisition of Activision Blizzard revealed that the Xbox parent projected Game Pass to hit 77 million subscribers by the end of fiscal year 2026. That has not happened.

Game Pass At 30 Million Subscribers

Citing a source familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Xbox Game Pass currently has around 30 million subscribers. The same figure was reported separately by Bloomberg, as well. That means Xbox has lost 4 million Game Pass subscribers since 2024 — Microsoft had confirmed at the time that the service had 34 million paying members.

Last month, Xbox's chief strategy officer Matthew Ball revealed that the company lost millions of Game Pass subscribers when it hiked the price of the subscription service last year. In April, Microsoft reduced the prices of Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass memberships and said it would remove future day-one Call of Duty releases from the service.

This week, Sharma announced that Xbox would lay off 3,200 employees as part of a broader restructuring across Microsoft's gaming division. As part of the cuts, the company is parting ways with five of its studios, including Dishonored maker Arkane.

In an email sent to staff, Sharma cast doubts on the bets made under previous Xbox leadership and said the company's business was not “healthy.”

“We are operating at margins that are 3–10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses,” Sharma said. “We entered Gen 9 with a smaller install base and a higher cost structure. To grow, we bet on Game Pass, multi-platform, and a broader portfolio of content. While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected.”