Microsoft reportedly estimated that Game Pass led to $300 million in lost sales of Black Ops 6, with 82% of copies sold being on the Game Pass-less PlayStation 5

Black Ops 6 american dad skin — (Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

A new Bloomberg report based on interviews with former Microsoft employees has offered more fuel for speculation about the continued viability of Game Pass, including Microsoft's own alleged estimate for how much sales revenue Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 lost by being on the subscription service.

Unlike Steam, which offers its own real-time metrics while also being monitored by third parties like SteamDB, Game Pass is a black box, with only periodic updates from Microsoft⁠—or insider information like that obtained by Bloomberg⁠—to offer an impression of the service's health. Microsoft says it is growing and popular, but Xbox has been on a steady drumbeat of mass layoffs and studio closures in recent years.

This is an internal estimate that was never meant to be public, and it casts a negative light on a flagship project at the company⁠—the incentive when making this estimate was to be as accurate as possible. We don't know how Microsoft produced the figure, but it was presumably the result of fairly sophisticated projections.

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Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch. You can follow Ted on Bluesky.

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