Game Pass: 500K+ new players for Star Wars Outlaws, Space Marine II & Death Stranding
We take a look at our Game Pass numbers for January's big additions to the service, before giving our take on Xbox's new CEO.
Following our look at January’s PlayStation Plus additions, we’ll now turn our eye to Xbox’s content subscription. In January 2026, Game Pass welcomed several third-party titles, but here are the standouts we’ll focus on today:
Star Wars Outlaws (added to Game Pass on Jan 13).
Resident Evil Village (Jan 20).
Death Stranding Director’s Cut (Jan 21).
Ninja Gaiden Ragebound (Jan 21).
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II (Jan 29).
Let’s see how many new players these games have added via Game Pass as of Feb 23. This data covers not only console Game Pass subscribers, but also those who played via PC or cloud.
How many Game Pass subscribers used their sub to access January 2026’s additions?
January 2026’s Game Pass additions were dominated by two high-profile titles leveraging non-endemic IP.
Star Wars Outlaws, integrated into Game Pass following a slow launch, onboarded almost 600K new players via Game Pass across console, PC, and cloud. This influx effectively doubled the game’s total reach on Xbox, with the volume of new Game Pass players matching Outlaws’ lifetime sales on the platform.
Around 100K Game Pass subscribers used the service to play Outlaws on the day it was added. Given that the Xbox sales curve for Outlaws had basically flatlined before this integration, the timing was a calculated bet to increase the game’s ROI via the deal.
This follows a period of noted underperformance relative to Ubisoft’s internal projections, hampered by launch-window technical instability, mechanical friction with the stealth, and a cooling of broader Star Wars brand sentiment.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II entered the service at month-end and quickly got 544K new players, demonstrating the tried-and-true genre-fit for the Xbox ecosystem.
Prior to its Game Pass debut, Space Marine II maintained a steady baseline of 20K to 30K DAUs through premium sales, which had already exceeded 1M sold on Xbox.
After the Game Pass launch, our estimates show that the DAU floor has stayed above 50K, peaking at almost 175K at the beginning of February.
Xbox gamers love over-the-shoulder shooters. Our estimates show that 57% of Space Marine II players on Xbox previously played Gears 5. And 35% of its players have engaged with Helldivers 2, a paid game – and a PlayStation-published one, no less – that’s never been part of Game Pass.
Space Marine II was also a strategic addition, coming in the lead-up to Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. That’s out later this year and has seen some promo from Xbox.
Iconic gaming franchises also added plenty of new Game Pass players
As for the rest of the list:
Death Stranding Director’s Cut’s addition to the console and cloud tiers on January 21 brought in 512K new players, marking a significant expansion for the Hideo Kojima-led IP on the platform. It successfully tapped into a latent Kojima-curious demographic. Our data indicates that about 25% of Xbox’s Death Stranding players had previously engaged with Metal Gear Solid V on Xbox. Maybe we’ll be seeing Death Stranding 2 on Xbox following the PC port later this year?
Resident Evil Village saw a more modest uptake, adding 160K new players via its January 20 Game Pass debut. It’s another calculated lead-in strategy to build momentum ahead of Resident Evil Requiem’s launch on Friday. Notably, its addition to PlayStation Plus Extra (on the same day) yielded significantly higher engagement (852K). On Xbox, Village had over 500K MAUs in January, suggesting plenty of folks replaying the older title ahead of the new one. That’ll sell pretty well on Xbox, I reckon.
Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, a 2D retro-modern revival from the talented team behind Blasphemous, got 102K new players via Game Pass. Despite a strong critical reception, Ragebound has struggled to find a commercial foothold since its July 2025 launch, suggesting Game Pass is a tactical play to offset the soft sales. The title did, however, find a niche audience within the side-scroller vertical, with 75% of its Xbox players having previously engaged with the 2022 hit TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge. While it remains a brilliant mechanical achievement (and an awesome game), Ragebound is a sobering reminder of the crowded market’s volatility.
Of course, day-one Game Pass titles usually see far higher engagement (and sales cannibalisation), as they’re timed with the peak of the marketing hype. We’ll be breaking down some numbers there in one of next week’s newsletters, so keep an eye out – and make sure to hit subscribe below – to get that straight to your inbox.
On Xbox’s new CEO
Since Microsoft announced its new Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma, the internet has gone mental. There are two camps, really:
Those on a witch hunt because of her AI and non-gaming background
And those who are overly sympathetic to Sharma because she’s in a tough position and her heart’s in the right place.
As ever, the truth’s somewhere in the middle, and everybody is screaming at the symptoms while ignoring the disease.
The transition has been, to put it gently, a PR nightmare, so business as usual for Xbox ... Many of us suspected that Phil Spencer’s tenure was coming to an end, but the exit of Sarah Bond – long considered the next in line – certainly took me off guard.
Xbox positioned Bond as the face of the future, but as reported by The Verge Microsoft’s top brass thought she was too tied to the disastrous “This is an Xbox” strategy – a confusing, muddled shotgun approach.
Replacing a mostly beloved industry veteran with an AI executive whose Gamertag was seemingly set up last Tuesday is a bad look and lacks authenticity. It’s a shaky start, to be honest. Especially as Xbox did something similar with Bond.
The scepticism surrounding Sharma is understandable, and that was my first reaction, too. We gamers are a protective bunch, and seeing a leader who has to ask for game recommendations on Twitter feels like a betrayal of the gamer-first culture Spencer spent a decade building.
The reality is that Spencer’s good-guy strategy has hit a wall – and it did so years ago, truth be told. Spencer has kept Xbox afloat since the disastrous Xbox One. But despite a $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Xbox hardware is in dire straits.
The brand never recovered from losing the Xbox One generation. The Game Pass and “Xbox Everywhere” vision, while noble in its attempt to shift gaming distribution, came from desperation.
Now, Xbox has a muddled brand identity and a stagnant subscriber base. Bond’s strategy of chasing tomorrow’s mobile and cloud customers – ostracising today’s console fanboys in the process – left the door open for Sony and Valve to continue eating Xbox’s lunch (despite sharing some of the meal with them)
Sharma’s hiring is to try to salvage things. Her background in user acquisition at Meta and platform scaling at Instacart, two roles she excelled in, is obviously what drove Microsoft to this decision.
However, the hiring has also reignited the fear that Microsoft is moving toward an AI-first, games-second model. Xbox co-founder Seamus Blackley hasn’t held back, suggesting that Sharma’s role is more akin to a “palliative care doctor” (oof) brought in to euthanise Xbox once and for all. That’s a hot take, and not one I fully agree with.
There IS a legitimate concern that Microsoft, now AI-obsessed and sullying its core products with its experiments, has the patience for the messy, unpredictable business of making art. The layoffs point to this, but they’re happening across the industry. I’m still not over Bluepoint. I digress.
Entertainment is a hits-driven business. As an analyst, it pains me to say this a little, but making hit games is an art (outside of the live-ops and mobile predatory stuff). There is a gut feel for culture and trends that doesn’t show up in analytics or a spreadsheet.
Those things are important, but they’re not all that matters. That’s always been part of my mantra as an analyst, and it’s served me pretty well, to be honest. There’s a balance.
If Sharma does view games merely as content for an AI-driven delivery system, which she might well do, what’s left of Xbox’s soul will wither.
But Sharma can turn things around.
Sharma’s first memo promised a return to the old Xbox, a refusal to flood the ecosystem with AI slop. Right now, these are just PR-directed words, and words are cheap.
But if she if she can put Microsoft’s money – and resources – where her mouth currently is, giving the creatives the air cover they need to take risks, she could turn things around.
She doesn’t need to have beaten Elden Ring to be a great CEO; she needs to be a leader and amplifier who surrounds herself with people who know what they’re doing and actually listens to them. This is something I saw Chris Dring saying earlier this week, and I wholeheartedly agree.
I’m going to be brutally candid here, though (not like me, I know!). This goes higher than Sharma. I don’t think a high-growth tech giant and a creative entertainment business are compatible. Like I said at the top of this section, everybody is screaming at the symptoms while ignoring the disease.
The games business is low margin versus what Microsoft is currently chasing (for now), and the development timelines are long. Despite Sharma’s potential, the most logical long-term move is to spin Xbox off. It has Activision, Bethesda, and some of the most valuable IP in the business.
A standalone Xbox would be free from the burden of matching the ROI of Azure or the ubiquity of Windows. It could return to its roots as a scrappier, game-focused competitor.
Sharma may well be the person to prepare Xbox for a transition away from Game Pass stagnation and ‘’this is an Xbox!’’, but for the brand to truly reclaim its 25-year legacy, it needs to stop being a footnote for Satya Nadella and become something of its own.
It’s big enough.
The best pathway forward, in my eyes, is to set Xbox free. Not by euthanising it, but by spinning it off.
Gaming is in a better place with a strong, independent Xbox. But, as that’s not likely right now, let’s give Sharma a shot. If she’s smart (she is), she’ll take cues from Take-Two’s top dog, Strauss Zelnick.
I come back to this CNBC interview with Zelnick quite a lot:
‘’I do not play video games’’ Zelnick said. ‘’My role is to attract, maintain, and motivate the best talent in the business, and then get out the way.’’
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The last word
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Great analysis. Couldn't agree more that Xbox as a brand needs to be spun off and set free. The time is right.