The news of Microsoft"s acquisition of ZeniMax Media, owner of Bethesda, is hard to miss considering the scale of the deal. However, alongside that announcement there was another major piece of news from Microsoft - Xbox Game Pass now has over 15 million subscribers.
First launched in June 2017, it took almost three years for Game Pass to reach 10 million subscribers, a goal it hit in late April, according to Microsoft. Now, in less than five months since then, the service has grown by another five million subscribers - a massive 50% increase.
Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make Game Pass a compelling service. Not only does it include all of its own-published games on launch day, it also gets many titles from other developers, such as Red Dead Redemption 2, which was added in May. Microsoft has also acquired a large number of studios in the past couple of years, bringing even more titles to the service on day one.
Most recently, Microsoft announced that EA Play, a subscription service focused on Electric Arts games, is being added to Xbox Game Pass at no additional cost, and it launched cloud streaming as part of Game Pass Ultimate, giving users the chance to play games even without a console or PC. And today, of course, came the news of the Bethesda acquisition, which will see its future games land on Game Pass as soon as they release. Major additions will likely continue to drive even faster growth for the service.