During a financial report held tonight by Microsoft,during which the tech giant showed that it is in excellent health with a 15% increase in revenue compared to last year despite the ongoing crisis, the Redmond company also updated shareholders on the results of its online services, surprising especially with the number of Xbox Game Pass subscribers.

The innovative "subscription game" service has in fact reached, according to Microsoft, the 10 million active users, a number that no one expected if we consider the competing services: EA Access was at 5 million at the end of 2019, while Sony's service competitor, PS Now reached only 1 million users.

Thanks to Microsoft's aggressive policies (primarily the conversion of the Gold in Game Pass to 1 Euro but also the decision to release all first party titles at launch, a policy that will have a big impact in the next-gen when you can enjoy Xbox Series X without practically buying any games), Xbox Game Pass therefore imposes itself as a bully as the market-leading subscription gaming service,facing with the right foot a future in which subscriptions will be increasingly central in the business models.

Good news also on the Xbox Livefront, which registers 90 million monthly active users on any platform (including the PC or cross-platform games that use the Live, such as Minecraft for PS4 and Switch), while the Project xCloud service now sees hundreds of thousands of users despite still being in Preview; a number that is obviously expected to grow already these days, when many European countries have joined the Preview program (and coming to Italy next week).

In short, it seems that Microsoft's digital strategy is proving to be a winner: this will certainly be of great help at the beginning of the next-gen, but now we wait to know the games that will fuel this strategy!