Diablo IV will be the first game from Activision Blizzard to appear on Xbox Game Pass. Its release on the service is scheduled for March 28.
After Microsoft completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, fans speculated that its games would immediately hit the subscription service. However, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said last October, just after the deal was completed, that fans would have to wait until 2024 before games like Call of Duty would start appearing on the service. That time has come, but instead of Call of Duty, fans will get Diablo IV.
Diablo IV was one of the big hits of last year, and its seasonal updates continue to bring new experiences to players. Moving the game to Game Pass will open it up to a large audience of service subscribers.
As for the size of this audience, the Xbox Game Pass service currently has 34 million subscribers. That’s a 36% increase from the 25 million Microsoft last reported more than two years ago. Microsoft revealed a new figure of 34 million subscribers on the official Xbox podcast.
Phil Spencer previously admitted that the growth of Xbox Game Pass on consoles is slow, but the number of subscribers on PC is growing much more dynamically.
“We’ve seen incredible growth on PC… On console, I’ve noticed that growth has slowed down, mainly because at some point you reach everyone on console who wants to subscribe,” Spencer told the Wall Street Journal.
Microsoft previously set an ambitious goal of reaching 100 million Xbox Game Pass subscribers by 2030. However, this is unlikely to happen. Microsoft planned to increase Game Pass subscriptions by 73% for the fiscal year ending June 2022. But in fact, the user base only increased by 28%.
Source: The Verge 1, 2
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