The revelation has sparked more questions than it answered.
With more and more AAA studios raising the prices for their games and an increasing number of gamers opting to access them via subscription services in response – regrettably, actually getting comfortable with not owning their games – Xbox Game Pass has been making headlines more frequently in recent months, leading many to believe that Microsoft's service has seen significant growth as of late.
Giving us the smallest of hints as to whether or not that's the case is Timur222, a well-known video game enthusiast, who recently spotted an inconspicuous LinkedIn page revealing the latest known number of Game Pass subscribers.
The page in question belongs to Kevin Keum, a Program Manager at Microsoft responsible for overseeing live operations for Xbox Game Pass and ensuring smooth game title launches. According to his listed Experience, the subscription service has now surpassed 35 million subscribers. The last official update came in February 2024, when Microsoft reported 34 million subscribers – a number that also included Xbox Live Gold members.
Despite coming from an actual high-level Microsoft employee – a second-best source for this kind of information, short of quarterly financial statements – the newly noticed figure has raised more questions than it provided answers.
First and foremost, the community has started wondering when exactly those 35+ million were added to Kevin's Experience tab. Naturally, there's a big difference between it being added in, say, March 2024, October 2024, or May 2025, and depending on the timing, it could suggest either very rapid growth, slow growth, or de facto stagnation.
Secondly, with no way to confirm when the 35 million milestone was actually reached, it's difficult to estimate how many subscribers Game Pass has as of right now, June 2025. Game Rant, for instance, puts the number at around 38 million based on recent compound annual growth rates.
Meanwhile, Circana's Mat Piscatella noted back in April that spending on video game subscriptions in the US has basically plateaued following the COVID-driven surge of 2020-21 – with a 12% bump in Q4 attributed to Call of Duty joining Game Pass – making it tough to accurately assess the service's true momentum.
One thing is clear, though – whether the real number is 35 million, 38 million, or even 40 million, Xbox still seems far from hitting its target of 110 million Game Pass subscribers by 2030, a goal originally revealed in a leaked Xbox presentation from Fiscal Year 2022.
Don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.