Analysis of Xbox Game Pass
Three years have passed since Xbox Game Pass launched on consoles. The analysis of Redmond giant's activities carried out by the users of ResetEra forum enable us to check how many games have already been made available to subscribers and which publishers are most willing to support the service, as well as find out, among other things, when most productions debut in it.
- From June 1, 2017, a total of 453 productions were added to Xbox Game Pass on Xbox One console;
- On average, every month more games appear in the service than disappear from it (the exceptions are May and August);
- So far, 47 titles have been released on Xbox Game Pass on the day of their launch;
- Apart from Microsoft, the publishers most willingly supporting the service include: Capcom, Deep Silver and Square Enix.
The ResetEra forum features an extensive post, the author of which, one MauroNL, is carefully analysing the console version of the Xbox Game Pass service (as its PC equivalent has not yet left the beta-test phase), giving players who pay for the subscription access to a large catalogue of games. Thanks to this we can find out, among other things, how much productions have so far been given into our hands by the Redmond giant, and which companies are most willing to support it in this regard, as well as what months are the best in terms of expanding the catalogue with new items. Let's look at the details.
Let's start with the fact that Xbox Game Pass has been operating since June 1, 2017. Since then, a total of 453 titles have appeared in the service, of which 342 are titles for Xbox One, 107 are items from Xbox 360, and 4 - classics from the first generation of Microsoft's console (as of February 16, 2020). Although over time some games appear in Game Pass and others disappear from it, the chart below perfectly shows that the number of items that can be checked by subscribers is almost constantly growing (the second quarter of 2018 and the third quarter of 2019 are the only worse periods in its history to date). As a fun fact it should be added that so far 47 productions have been included in the Xbox Game Pass offer on the day of their release.
Before we move on to discussing how long most games remain in the Xbox Game Pass library, let's give some space to their publishers. Among them, Microsoft is the undisputed leader with 68 productions provided to subscribers. Second place is occupied by Capcom with 29 titles, and third place by Deep Silver with 18 positions. Just behind the podium were such companies as Square Enix (16 games), Warner Bros. (15 items), SEGA (14 titles) and Bethesda and Team17 (13 items each). The great absent on the list of publishers supporting Xbox Game Pass include Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard. Rockstar Games and Ubisoft almost made it to the, but the former provided Grand Theft Auto V, while the latter, Tom Clancy's The Division.
As for the availability of individual titles in the Xbox Game Pass subscription - the vast majority of them are present in the service from 12 to 18 months. So far only a few productions that can be checked out for less than half a year have appeared. As far as the best and worst months for Game Pass subscribers are concerned, so far, on average, May was the month with the highest number of titles disappearing, and June was the richest in new additions. In the remaining months, more items were added to the catalogue than were removed; only in August, more games disappear from the offer than are added to it.
As a fun fact it should be added that although a few games were supposed to disappear from the Xbox Game Pass offer, subscribers of the service can still check them out. The titles in question are Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Dead Island: Definitive Edition, Guacamelee! JetPac Refuelled and The Hunter: Call of the Wild. Some productions, on the other hand, have been staying in the Xbox Game Pass library longer than originally planned. Why is this happening? Good question, but without an answer.
Finally, a word about the platforms. Despite the fact that in the second half of 2017 Xbox 360 games were leading among the productions appearing in Xbox Game Pass, the situation changed dramatically in subsequent periods. Nowadays, games from the previous generation of Microsoft consoles are in clear minority among the novelties in the library.
