Talking at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer spoke about Xbox Game Pass and its profitability, Microsoft’s approach to mobile and a possible price increase.
Phil Spencer said that the company’s Xbox Game Pass subscription service is already profitable. Xbox Game Pass is around 15 percent of Microsoft’s overall Xbox content and services revenue. Spencer says he expects Game Pass to stay around 10-15 percent of Microsoft’s Xbox content and services revenue and that “it’s profitable for us.”
“Game Pass as an overall part of our content and services revenue is probably 15 percent,” says Spencer. “I don’t think it gets bigger than that. I think the overall revenue grows so 15 percent of a bigger number, but we don’t have this future where I think 50–70 percent of our revenue comes from subscriptions.” Spencer also talked about the growth of Game Pass on console and PC. “We’re seeing incredible growth on PC … On console, I’ve seen growth slow down, mainly because at some point you’ve reached everybody on console that wants to subscribe,” explains Spencer.
One of the other topics that Spencer talked about was Microsoft’s approach to mobile. Last week, as part of the ongoing CMA investigation into Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft revealed that they are looking into plans for an Xbox mobile gaming platform and store. This would be something that would rival the Apple and Google Play stores on mobile. However, Spencer understands that getting into the mobile space will have its challenges. He believes that Microsoft is playing the long game when it comes to mobile.
“If you take a long-term bet, which we’re doing, that we will be able to get access to players on the largest platforms that people play on — Android and iOS phones — we want to be in a position with content, players, and storefront capability to take advantage of it,” says Spencer. Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal is key to the company’s mobile gaming efforts.
Pricing was also something that Spencer talked about in his conversations. Microsoft has not increased the price of its consoles or Game Pass but that may not last.
“We’ve held price on our console, we’ve held price on games and our subscription. I don’t think we’ll be able to do that forever,” admits Spencer. “I do think at some point we’ll have to raise some prices on certain things, but going into this holiday we thought it was really important that we maintain the prices that we have.”