By Nelson Schneider - 10/12/25 at 03:06 PM CT
Oh dear, it looks like Microsoft’s endeavors to become Gaming’s loss-leader with Gamepass have already started to bear rotten fruits. According to a recent Bloomberg report, the Xbox Division managed to leave $300 million dollars on the table by putting Activision-Blizzard’s latest ‘Call of Duty’ game on Gamepass day-one instead of simply selling more retail and digitally licensed copies.
While I personally find it baffling that ‘CoD’ is still popular enough to drive those kinds of sales numbers and potentially bring in that kind of revenue, what is NOT baffling is the concept that giving away an entire library of $60 $70 games for less than $20 a month is probably not sustainable in the long-run...
...Which explains why Microsoft also faced extreme backlash and mass cancellations by Gamepass users in response to the announcement that Gamepass Ultimate will essentially be the only version of the service worth subscribing to AND that the Ultimate tier will henceforth be 50% more expensive, rising in cost from $19.99/month to $29.99/month.
Clearly no one at Xbox has any idea what they’re doing. This lack of clear leadership was on further display when a corporate spokes-thing declared that, "We are actively investing in our future first-party consoles and devices designed, engineered and built by Xbox,” after months of signaling that Xbox was prepared to exit hardware in order to focus on making its software available on every platform – i.e., “pulling a Sega.” Of course, with how two-faced and evasive corporate statements tend to be, any and everything said by Xbox spokes-things can and should be taken as legalistic ass-covering performed in order to protect stock prices.
I really don’t know what “success” looks like to Microsoft anymore. Placing all of their eggs in Gamepass’ basket has left them more vulnerable to mass-cancellation protests and resistance to price-hikes than a more diversified gaming ecosystem otherwise would. Furthermore, being completely blind to the rising discontent of Subscription Fatigue that is motivating a second generation of Cord Cutters is just flat-out foolish.
