I don’t know if true but this guy asket to Benji on Twitter
Could someone verify this?
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I wouldn’t be surprised based on how they were tracking in growth throughout 2020, and then with the new console launch, and the holidays, it would make sense. We should get confirmation at the next earnings call. I expect they could reach 30-35+ million subscribers by the end of the year.
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It’s gonna be real hard to put a realistic ceiling on guesstimates that far out since this year alone they will be starting their big 1P push, getting XSX/XSS sales momentum post launch (All Access becomes relevant once stock is available too), embedding xCloud/GP into TV’s and X1 consoles, expanding GP with what sounds like lots of publishing deals, likely releasing a streaming stick for xCloud/GP, and fully targeting the mobile market as well as starting their Facebook Streaming partnership thing. It’s hard to oversell how much potential growth is awaiting them across all these devices. 
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I completely agree. I think if the momentum stayed the same, then 30-35 million subscribers would make sense, but it’s very possible they could start gaining even more traction with the new measures and announcements that are bound to come in the 2nd half of the year. Even confirmation on their Bethesda policy should cause an uptick. Very difficult to put a limit on the growth over the next 2 years. I think gamepass is becoming a runaway success.
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20 million seems to be pretty realistic. Back when they announced 15 million, heard they were over that mark. The adoption of Game Pass by new Xbox owners has been around 70%. Pandemic has gamers engaging in more stuff. PC Game Pass had released a stream of quality stuff since 15 million was announced.
If Halo, Starfield and Forza all hit in 2021 like I expect, 30 million seems like a very realistic target. Especially when you factor in the All Access bundles that give you Game Pass Ultimate in order to pay less up front. 50 million by 2023. Been predicting that since they announced GP crossed 10 million.
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I know we have been seeing roughly 5 million new users per quarter the last few quarters.
It will be interesting to see how the reduction of support to Xbox One towards the end of the year affects growth. The existing base will need to transition to either Xbox Series or Cloud Streaming or we could see some existing users begin to fall off.
Obviously this could be offset by growth of the streaming market.
It can’t be verified obviously, but yeah they broke 20 ages ago.
They were basically almost at 20 when they announced 15. They do this thing now where they low ball. Not sure why.
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Interesting. I wonder if it’s about setting expectations they can be confident in keeping up with. They might have been concerned that announcing almost 20 million might have produced the expectation that they consistently can gain 8-9 million subscribers per quarter when they might have been concerned about reaching that every quarter, and 5 million over the previous quarter is still an impressive gain to shareholders etc.
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That’s my assumption.
Say 15 when it’s closer to 20 so that way if they have a drop off in subs once some trials run out or whatever they can still announce “growth” even if they dropped from 19 to 17 or something
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Game Pass is easily past 20m as of December 31st.
True or not this thing will get some crazy numbers when the big boys start coming out, I’m predicting 30 million by the end of this year.
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I just think Microsoft is counting up by every 5 million so they will always round down in order to keep the numbers nice and round. They will probably move away once they stop growing almost exponentially as you say.
I strongly suspect we will get the announcement that they have reached 25 million subscribers when they announce the Bethesda deal is closed.
I’d up it closer to 35m. Halo and Starfield.
I don’t see an quarter ahead without growth. Between Smart TVs, XStick, IOS and adding S/X cloud support for Xbox Ones it will be like netflix. Who ever leaves will be offset by even more joining.
This is the way.
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That’s a really good point.
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They could hit enough users to release 2 AAA 150m budgeted games a month by the end of 2021, let that sink in. I can easily see Game Pass hitting 50m users, at that point they could buy Zenimax media sized deal every 15 months, they could buy Insomniac twice every month and buying a Minecraft sized deal every 5 months.
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One thing Gamepass sure does is make the math easier for predicting 
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haha yeah, do need to keep in mind not everyone pays full RRP, MS also needs to pay 3rd party for the deals and people sub to Game Pass Ultimate which is more, I just used the base $10 a month obviously 
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I think its so they can make a better ‘story’ for investors. When they purchased bethesda they announced that they had 15 million subscribers, after the deal closes in say Q1, maybe they make a similiar size acquisition in the summer (I dont know anything just spitballing) and then they can say that they have 25 million subs.
To investors this looks a lot better than the reality,(making numbers up) say 19 m when they purchased bethesda increasing to 25.5m when they make the made up summer acquistion.
and its going to increase even more when there 23 devs are in full swing.
I wish we had more visibility into the financials, juat for fun.
If we assume 20 million subscribers and they are all om GPU (so best case) their revenue would be 3.6 billion for the year.
For contrast, Sony’s Playstation business had a revenue of 18+ billion in 2019. That includes hardware (don’t know what percentage) , but it does make it pretty clear why Sony is not in a race to switch things up. It will take a lot of subs to get Xbox into that range.