Xbox Boss Admits Game Pass Has Been Down for Eight Months, But Says It’s Growing Again – WGB
Xbox boss Asha Sharma is back doing PR work again, this time in an on-stage interview with Bloomberg Tech. A lot of interesting information was shared, including this: Game Pass was down for 8 months and just started growing again.
“We’ve shipped more in the last 100 days than we did last year. We were able to reset Game Pass after an eight-month slump. Now it’s back to growing and increasing revenue retention. Most importantly, we’re starting to get back to being closer to our players and our community.”
We were able to reset Game Pass after eight months of downtime. – Asha Sharma
Sharma did not specify what kind of decline he was talking about. That could mean subscriber numbers, revenue, retention, engagement, or some combination of Game Pass’ internal metrics. He just plainly points without saying anything. In other words, exactly what you would expect from a CEO, really.
If I had to guess, I would say that the return on “increasing revenue retention” is really about subscribers. To put it bluntly, people have been bailed out and are now returning to service. Hmm, why would that be?
However, the eight-month period is remarkable. Count back from early June 2026 to around October 2025, the same month Microsoft made major changes to Game Pass and raised the price of Ultimate to $29.99 per month. In April 2026, Xbox reversed that move, dropping Ultimate to $22.99 per month and PC Game Pass to $13.99. In other words, while Sharma did not directly blame the price hike, the timeline is hard to ignore.
Asha mentioned the topic of Game Pass as part of the answer given to the question; how are the first 100 days. So that naturally comes down to what the next 100 days might look like for the new CEO.
“I think in the next 100 days, we have to reinvent the business. We need to look at how we invest, how we prioritize, change the way we work to get back to growth, to be where the world is playing.”
Again, not clear. But that word comes up again: “reset”. This is a strong name, indicating that Sharma is still planning some major changes to the brand. Given the state of Xbox, it’s exactly what the brand needs, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s tricky to be an Xbox customer these days when you’re not sure what the company is going to do from day to day.
“We’ve been in the game for a long time. We’re far from Xbox. We’re going to continue to invest. But there’s work to do. Share the numbers. We’re not in a healthy place, so, you know, the next 100 days are going to be about resetting the business.”
We are not in a healthy place – Asha Sharma
Game Pass has been a controversial topic since day one and will continue until the day it fades into memory, or until we all play games directly with a brain implant called the Xbox Brain Pass Ultimate Plus Family Edition.
For now, though, it’s still at the heart of Microsoft’s gaming strategy. Sharma’s comments suggest that Xbox still believes in the service, but also that Game Pass hasn’t been going as well as Microsoft’s marketing would sometimes have us believe. An eight-month decline, whatever the exact metric he was talking about, is nothing.
The good news for Xbox is that Sharma says Game Pass is growing again. The most interesting news is that apparently it should have been “reset” in the first place.
Whether that reset is enough to appease gamers, satisfy Microsoft, and reassure the wider industry that game subscriptions still have a bright future is another question entirely. But after years of debate about whether Game Pass is Xbox’s masterstroke or its giant green furnace, Sharma has given everyone something new to argue about.
So, business as usual Xbox, then.
