Sounds like it woulda been around 20mil for end of June then. Growth was 37% YoY which was below their internal target of 48%. Worth noting that when they made their 48% target last June it likely would have presumed Halo Infinite would have launched with the console that November, which obviously did not happen.
If we assume Jez Corden’s numbers are accurate, which I have no reason to believe they aren’t, Game Pass had 23 million subscribers in late April. Which to me shows that they had a nice surge when Outriders and MLB The Show 21 released and after a few slow months (by end of June) ~3 million people had unsubscribed. I imagine Psychonauts 2, Back 4 Blood, Forza, and Halo all being day one is going to give Game Pass a nice surge of new subscribers.
EDIT: I have learned that Jez corrected himself on the 23 million, so yeah just ignore this.
They aren’t accurate. The figures from MS put it at 20mil for end of June. He was hearing 22mil a month before that so honestly just think he has bad info here.
Subscription service numbers fluctuate wildly month to month. I’d be careful with the maths here as we don’t even know they are comparing end of June with end of June. I used to work for an app and we would do YoY as 12 month averages….
Worth noting that the expectations were set before halo was delayed. So they would have been expecting 48% assuming halo was coming out during during that fiscal year. So to still hit 37% growth seems pretty good. considering literally everything is delayed.
Is this true? Because they set a goal of 71% for FY2020 and of course they shattered it thanks to COVID, but why would they set such a high goal a year before they even knew COVID was going to happen? Do they not adjust these goals quarterly?
They are comparing things based on their fiscal year, which ends June 30th. Also, professional analysts agree with the 20mil figure AND Grubb apparently said he heard 21mil for E3, so all of that lines up nicely I’d say.
They would have set the goal before Halo was shown at the late July 2020 showcase, so yeah it would have been set prior to the delay being known it seems. That is very important context!
I do not think they had adjusted their targets quarterly since I’d imagine that CEO compensation metrics would have been coarse grained enough to avoid that kinda thing as otherwise Satya could manipulate targets to his advantage. That’s purely an assumption on my part though.
Microsoft Fiscal year ends every June 30th. Projections are just that based on known data at the time they are released. It’s a fairly normal practice with yearly projections. Adjusting your yearly projections is a big deal and normally mean something bad is happening and can potentially cause millions and billions of financial loss depending on how the market reacts. As if you are doing better you don’t revise your projections. You just announce you did better.
Missing the target by 10% when the only new first party titles released during the fiscal year were Tell Me Why, Battletoads, and Gears Tactics is damn good IMO. Had Halo actually made it they probably would have hit their target. Indies and third parties did a good job of carrying GP in a dry period for first party.
Also, reminder. The growth target was for Nadella getting a 5% raise. Shareholders won’t care. Nadella will. And he needs to raise numbers, not revenue. I’d say maybe even expect more acqs, deals, GPU perks, games signed and XGSGP LOIs.