Black Ops 6 On Game Pass Cost Microsoft $300 Million In Lost Sales

"Last year's Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was the first entry in the hit multiplayer military shooter to launch day-one on Game Pass in what reportedly turned out to be an expensive experiment for Microsoft. According to Bloomberg, making the game available for free to paid subscribers on console and PC cost the tech giant $300 million in lost sales of the 2024 best-seller. That data point adds some interesting context to Microsoft's controversial decision to hike the price of Game Pass Ultimate by 50 percent this week."

"A defining feature of Game Pass was the decision early on to release first-party games like Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite on the service day-and-date. Bloomberg reports that this move was "controversial internally" due to the likelihood of cannibalizing sales of big games that take a lot of time and money to develop. The Verge reported last year that a similar debate arose around the decision of whether to put Call of Duty on Game Pass or not."

"The former long-time head of Activision, Bobby Kotick, went on record during the 2023 FTC trial over Microsoft's acquisition of the company saying that he didn't think adding games like Call of Duty to subscription services made "commercial sense." "I have a general aversion to the idea of multi-game subscription services," he said at the time. "Maybe part of it is being in Los Angeles and having large, big media companies move their content to these subscription streaming services and the business results have suffered.""

Microsoft released Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 day-one on Game Pass, a move that reportedly resulted in $300 million in lost sales from console and PC purchases. The day-and-date strategy for first-party titles has faced internal concern over cannibalizing expensive-to-develop blockbuster sales. The former Activision head expressed aversion to multi-game subscription services and questioned their commercial sense. U.S. market data show Black Ops 6 sales were 23 percent higher than Modern Warfare 3 over the same period, with 82 percent of those sales on PlayStation and a 16 percent jump in subscription gaming services.

Read at Kotaku