Turns out Game Pass doesn’t actually lead to more game sales, Microsoft confirms

Microsoft is putting its foot in its own mouth after the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority’s provisional report on the Microsoft and Activision Blizzard sale included a statement from Microsoft that admitted its Game Pass subscription cannibalizes the sale of the titles included in it.

This directly contradicts what Xbox vice president Phil Spencer said in 2018 in an interview with levelup.com, where he said Game Pass increases word-of-mouth sales, where those who don’t have Game Pass might pick up a game based on someone who has tried it on the service.

But it turns out word-of-mouth marketing isn’t as strong as Spencer originally anticipated, since just four years later, Microsoft is now admitting that the service eclipses sales. All of the percentages were redacted from the report, but even without it, Microsoft still admits there is some kind of decline in the sale of a game that has been included in Game Pass.

“Microsoft also submitted that its internal analysis shows a [redacted percent] decline in base game sales twelve months following their addition on Game Pass,” the report reads.

The findings show that gamers tend to switch between a Game Pass subscription and buying a game as a one-time purchase to own it. Many of the statistics have been redacted from the report, but it seems that Microsoft is admitting that most of its Game Pass customers don’t tend to buy the games on the service, and word-of-mouth doesn’t spread far enough to make up for the lost revenue that Game Pass takes away.

The Activision Blizzard and Microsoft sale is still under investigation by many governing bodies in different countries, and the sale is expected to close sometime in the summer this year if everything goes Activision Blizzard’s way. Gamers should know in a few months whether or not the deal will happen, and whether or not it will leave Call of Duty behind in the process.