Diablo IV will be the first game from Activision Blizzard to appear on Xbox Game Pass. Its release in the service is scheduled for March 28.
After Microsoft completed the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, fans assumed that its games would be immediately added to the subscription service. However, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said in October last year, right after the deal was finalized, 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 give players new experiences. Bringing the game to Game Pass will open it up to a large audience of service subscribers.
As for the size of this audience, Xbox Game Pass currently has 34 million subscribers. This is a 36% increase compared to the 25 million that Microsoft last reported more than two years ago. Microsoft announced the new figure of 34 million subscribers on the official Xbox podcast.
Phil Spencer has previously admitted that there is a slow growth of Xbox Game Pass for consoles, but the number of subscribers on PC is growing much more dynamically.
«We’re seeing incredible growth on PC… On console, I’ve noticed that growth has slowed down, mainly because at some point you’ve reached 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 had planned to increase the number of Game Pass subscriptions by 73% in the fiscal year that ended in June 2022. But in fact, the user base increased by only 28%.