As we begin to close out the year, let’s take a look at one big gaming moment in 2022 – when Xbox finally released the Xbox Game Pass in Southeast Asia (SEA) on the 20th of April.
If you don’t already know, the Xbox Game Pass is a video game subscription service that provides subscribers with a rotating catalogue of over 300 games at a monthly fee.
With the subscription service already available in Singapore for a while, Xbox players in the rest of SEA were more than eager. So when it was released at just one US dollar for the first three months, it was met with great success.
“The insider preview response (was) phenomenal in Southeast Asia,” said Xbox Asia Business Lead, Jeremy Hinton. “In terms of interests, people who signed up, people who tested, the response was incredible.”
The subscription service’s success in SEA only added to its worldwide success. According to a statement released by Sony: “Game Pass leads PlayStation Plus significantly. Game Pass has 29 million subscribers to Xbox Game Pass console and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and is expected to grow substantially in the future.”
The Xbox Game Pass has grown to dominate the industry and become most players’ go-to gaming service. However, reports show that Microsoft has not actually met their subscriber targets for it. Why is that?
According to Forbes and other players online, that does not necessarily mean that the subscription service is unsuccessful, it is more so that Microsoft has unrealistic expectations.
Paul Tassi said in the Forbes article: “The good news is…growth is growth, and the problems may not be with the pace of adoption of the service, but instead Microsoft’s expectations of it.”
Xbox players in SEA finally got their hands on the Game Pass this year and are loving it. Moving forward, will any other gaming subscription service challenge Microsoft? Or will they sail into the distance?
