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Microsoft’s Game Pass service has been somewhat shrouded in secrecy regarding its financials – until now, anyway, as a document has revealed just how much money it generates a year.Game Pass’ revenue has been revealed as part of Microsoft’s ongoing acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), who has approved the deal, has released a document outlining its rationale – which also includes a lot of data on gaming companies.According to the document (spotted by Tweaktown), Xbox Game Pass generated £2.6bn ($2.9bn) in the fiscal period ending January 2021 – though even this doesn’t offer the complete picture, as it only covers console revenue and PC Game Pass is not included.Still, that revenue makes up around 18 per cent of Microsoft’s total yearly Xbox revenue at £14.7bn ($16.28bn), or almost 30 per cent of its games and service revenue £11.3bn ($12.581).Microsoft has been inconsistent about revealing just how many subscribers Game Pass has – but went from 15 million to 18 million subscribers between August 2021 and March 2022.Though as Eurogamer notes, it’s not exactly clear how they’ve arrived at this figure, as it could include discounted game sales through Game Pass and DLC sales from games on the service, or indeed it might not.For context, it is revealed elsewhere in the document that Nintendo Switch Online generated £843million ($932million), and EA Play brought in £322million ($356million).The document has been released following substantial scrutiny of the proposed Activision Blizzard merger.

EA has said that Skate will launch as a free-to-play game to help it cater to both Gen Z and Gen Alpha players.This comes from the EA earnings call that took place earlier this month, where the company was asked why it moved the Skate franchise from the company’s typical “premium plus live service” releases to a free-to-play model.“When we look at Skate, I think what happened is our ambitions have continued to grow,” said EA CEO Andrew Wilson. “So as we thought about that, we really took a step back and evaluated how best we deliver that.

Sony released an earnings report that included details of its recent acquisition of Bungie that revealed employee retention plans.Sony revealed plans to purchase Destiny 2 creator Bungie for £2.6 billion earlier this week, and now an earning report says that a third of the money will be used for “deferred payments to employee shareholders, conditional upon their continued employment, and other retention incentives” (via TweakTown).The deferred payments are planned across multiple years once the acquisition is complete and aim to keep Bungie’s current staff at the company. Sony is prepared to use £582 million in deferred payments in the first two years after the deal completes.The acquisition was announced in a press release which revealed that Bungie would be an independent subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment and run by its Board of Directors, chaired by Pete Parsons and Bungie’s current management team.“We’ve had a strong partnership with Bungie since the inception of the Destiny franchise, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to officially welcome the studio to the PlayStation family,” said Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment.“This is an important step in our strategy to expand the reach of PlayStation to a much wider audience.” Ryan continued, “We understand how vital Bungie’s community is to the studio and look forward to supporting them as they remain independent and continue to grow.