It’s been a long time since Microsoft officially announced the subscriber numbers of its Xbox Game Pass service, which allows players to access dozens of games for a monthly subscription fee. The company last announced these numbers in January 2022, when it first announced plans to acquire Activision Blizzard. “Today, we also announced that Game Pass now has more than 25 million subscribers,” Microsoft said in the press release announcing the plan.
No updates on these numbers have been provided for more than a year. However, the other day, it was revealed that Craig McNary, one of Microsoft’s Xbox managers, announced a new number for a short time on his LinkedIn profile.
McNary’s job history listing shows that he was the Xbox division’s integrated marketing director for several years until August 2023, when he took on the title of Senior Director of Platform and Brand Marketing at the new Xbox. For a short time, his LinkedIn profile said that in his first role, he helped launch Xbox Game Pass and grow it to “over 30 million members.”
Although this statement is no longer included in his profile, this article, like almost everything that steps on the internet, has been recorded. As reported via Windows Central, X user “Timur222” posted a screenshot of McNary’s previous profile featuring Xbox Game Pass issues.
It is currently unknown when McNary updated his LinkedIn profile with this information. Assuming it was updated with the mission change in August, that means it took 19 months for Xbox Game Pass to gain five million new members.
This week, Microsoft launched Xbox Game Pass Core, a replacement for its Xbox Live Gold service, giving subscribers access to 36 games and online gaming for $9.99 a month in the US. It’s not yet known how many Xbox Live Gold members have switched to the Xbox Game Pass Core service and whether those numbers will be added to Microsoft’s overall Xbox Game Pass subscriber numbers.
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