At a Wall Street Journal Live event, Xbox head and CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer shared his thoughts on the status of Xbox Game Pass, the company"s gaming subscription service.
Spencer says that Game Pass is profitable for Microsoft, with the service bringing in 15% of gaming revenues for the company. "I think it will stay in that 10-15% of our overall revenue, and it"s profitable for us," he said.
However, he also notes that while Game Pass subscriptions on PC have seen an "incredible growth," the service has slowed down on consoles "mainly because at some point you"ve reached everybody on console that wants to subscribe," Spencer said.
Spencer also hinted at potential price increases for for Xbox products or services. He states:
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. 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.
The Xbox chief doesn"t exactly specify which products could see a price raise. However, it"s possible that he could be referring to Xbox Series X and S consoles, services like Xbox Game Pass, or accessories.
Back in August, in light of the current global economic environment, Sony announced a price increase for its consoles in select regions including Canada, Europe, the UK, Japan, China, Mexico, and Australia. Despite this move, Microsoft continued selling its consoles for their original prices.
"We are constantly evaluating our business to offer our fans great gaming options. However, the company is not planning to raise prices, at least not right now," Spencer said at that time.
Source: WSJ Live (invite only) via The Verge