Microsoft suffered significant losses last year, mainly due to the integration of the Call of Duty series into the Game Pass subscription. According to a former company employee who wished to remain anonymous, the abandonment of traditional sales led to a loss of more than $300 million on consoles and PCs. This is reported by Bloomberg.
In response to the financial challenges, Microsoft's CFO Amy Hood has tasked the Xbox team with finding alternative ways to increase profits, according to sources within the company, both current and former employees.
According to analysts, Microsoft's strategy was only beneficial for the players themselves, but not for the business. Direct sales revenue has fallen significantly.
Game Pass did not deliver the expected explosive growth after the Activision acquisition, and Microsoft realized that infrastructure costs did not match their pricing model.
Former Xbox employees familiar with internal workflows confirm that adding Call of Duty to Game Pass made the game available to millions of subscribers but drastically reduced the number of copies sold. Despite this, the latest installment in the franchise — Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 — became the best-selling game in the US in 2024 and a record holder for sales in the series' history. However, as reported by IGN, the main contribution came from the PlayStation console, which accounted for 82% of all sales.