Microsoft reportedly lost $300 million on Black Ops 6

Due to Game Pass eating into sales margins.

The recent Game Pass price increase hasn't exactly slipped under the radar. The decision has sparked heated debate online and reignited long-standing questions about whether Microsoft's subscription model is actually sustainable, especially in the wake of the company's massive acquisition of Activision Blizzard King.

According to a new Bloomberg report citing several current and former Microsoft employees, the Game Pass model might be costing the company far more than it's bringing in. Sources claim that Xbox took a $300 million hit last year when it included Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 in the service, a figure representing lost sales on both console and PC.

"The price hike and other changes to the Game Pass plans are a sign that Xbox's big streaming push is still not generating the revenue it would like eight years after launch," Bloomberg writes. Despite adding some of its top-tier titles to the subscription, those moves are reportedly "cutting into sales of higher-margin games like Call of Duty.

Joost Van Dreunen, analyst at Aldora, further told Bloomberg that Game Pass "hasn't delivered the explosive growth Microsoft anticipated post-Activision" and that the company's "infrastructure costs don't align with their pricing model."

So the question remains: is Microsoft's Game Pass empire starting to show cracks, and will players be the ones footing the bill for the company's ambition?