Microsoft says the launch of Starfield led to a record-high increase in Xbox Game Pass subscriptions.
During an October 24th earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that on Starfield‘s September 6th launch, the Xbox and PC game led to the “most Game Pass subscriptions added on a single day ever.”
In general, Microsoft is pretty quiet on sales and subscriber data, so we don’t actually have much context for this Game Pass milestone. That said, this is only one measure of Starfield‘s success. To start, anyone, including Game Pass subscribers, could buy a Premium or Constellation Edition to play the game several days early. Of course, people can also still buy the game physically or digitally outside of Game Pass.
So far, we know Starfield was the best-selling game in Canada in September. Microsoft also confirmed that the Bethesda RPG surpassed 10 million players in its first three weeks. It’s hard to say how well the game has held onto that momentum, but there’s clearly a lot of interest.
Overall, Microsoft says Xbox content and services revenue, including Game Pass, increased by 13 last quarter, while overall gaming revenue rose by nine percent. However, hardware revenue fell seven percent.
Microsoft’s next quarter will be quite different, as it will be the first in which the company officially owns Activision Blizzard. As such, it’s anticipating a huge spike in revenue, particularly with a new Call of Duty set to release in November.
Via: GameSpot
