Game Pass October 2024 – Review

With the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on day one, after much speculation, October 2024 saw Microsoft lay down a marker for Game Pass and commit to the subscription in a way many were not not convinced they would. But have they taken their eyes off the ball with the other games coming to the service?

We saw early comments from Satya Nadella spelling out that the launch of Black Ops 6 was the “biggest Call of Duty release ever” and set a record for “Game Pass subscriber adds on launch day.” While we won’t know if these new subscribers stuck around until a few months down the line (if we ever find out), there’s no doubt the Black Ops launch has been a success and a boon for Game Pass.

But what was the month like as a whole? Let’s take a look.

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October 2024 – The Additions

Critical Reception

You don’t need to be told what the main attraction was this month, but in fact, Inscryption is tied with Black Ops 6 for the highest rated game by Metascore (both 85), with both Inscryption and South Park: The Fractured But Hole the best by Xbox Store player reviews (4.5). So purely from a critical point of view, Inscryption is the pick of the bunch.

At the other end of the spectrum, Goat Simulator 3 has the lowest Metascore at 68, and while Mad Streets has not had enough reviews for a Metascore, that doesn’t stop it having the lowest Xbox Store reviews at a disappointing 2.2.

Six of the games are above the Game Pass average for Metascore, which is good going (Black Ops 6, Inscryption, Sifu, MechWarrior 5: Clans, South Park: The Fractured but Whole and Ashen).

Recency

As you can see from the table above, October’s games are much newer than the Game Pass Ultimate average, coming in at just under 3 years old each on average. South Park, Ashen, and Donut County make the average older, with all of those originally released in 2018. In terms of the newest games, all three of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Goat Simulator 3 and MechWarrior 5: Clans were day one drops, making it a pretty decent month for new releases.

It should also be noted that both Ashen and Donut County have both been on Game Pass before, which makes their addition this time around a bit less remarkable.

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October 2024 – The Leavers

In terms of the games that left Game Pass Ultimate during October, Lonely Mountains: Downhill is the biggest casualty from a critical perspective, with a 84 Metascore. Frog Detective and Dyson Sphere topped the Xbox Store reviews at 4.4, with Frog Detective also boasting a respectable 79 Metascore. Dyson Sphere, being a Game Preview game, is not yet eligible for a Metascore.

When looking at the impact these leavers is having on Game Pass Ultimate overall, there aren’t many big issues. In particular, the Metascore and player reviews averages of the leavers are both lower than what’s left on the service, so while we’re losing games (and 1 more than we gained), they weren’t great, with the exception of the couple called out above.

One thing that did mark the leavers out was their recency. 7 of the 10 games that left in October were from 2023 or newer (with most of the leavers disappearing as they had reached the traditional Game Pass 12 month window). So this will have a negative effect on the Game Pass recency numbers as a whole.

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Additions vs Leavers

Indeed, the net change between new additions and games leaving is a mixed bag, with a noticeable uptick based on critical reception (the games coming in scored over 2.5 points more on average based on Metacritic score compared to the leavers), balanced by the additions being over a year older on average.

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Vs Last Month

Additions

Comparing October with the previous month, we can see some decent games in September, though it feels fair to say that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 beats anything on the list, at least from a headline-grabbing point of view. Frostpunk 2 was highly acclaimed in terms of reviews, while Age of Mythology and Ara: History Untold are both Xbox Games Studio published titles, which fans of the genre will have been looking forward to. We also saw a number of day one releases: as well as Frostpunk, Ara and Age of Empires, there was also Star Trucker, Train Sim World, both Mana games (in terms of their first appearance on Xbox), All You Need Is Help and Wargroove 2 as day one games.

The sheer volume of games in September was certainly notable – partly due to Tokyo Game Show taking place that month (with the Mana games and All You Need Is Help dropping at the show). A glance at the chart above shows how much better September was than October in terms of the volume of games (and therefore the value), but also from the point of view of recency. October wins from a critical point of view though: it’s games were better, but there were less of them.

Leavers

At the other end, we saw a huge number of games leave the service in September (which will be something of a trend going forward, we suspect). Payday 3, Valheim and Ace Attorney Trilogy stood out to me, but there’s likely to be something in the list of 13 games that left in September that people will miss. From that perspective, the 10 games that left in October is an improvement, though October’s leavers were also almost a year newer on average.

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Vs Last Year

Additions

Part of the reason for the large number of games leaving in October 2024 was due to the high number added in October of the prior year (with 12 months being the standard Game Pass window, particularly for day one releases). And there were some HUGE games in there. OK, not Black Ops 6 huge, but still. Forza Motorsport was the highlight, but Cities Skylines 2 (while having a poor launch), the Dead Space remake and Jusant are all head turners. They were also nearly all extremely new games, with all but one being released in 2023 itself.

As you might expect, this results in a raft of red values in the table below – there were more games added in October 2023, they were newer on average, and had a higher value (both total value, as you’d expect, but also on average). On the plus side (and it is a pretty big plus), the games this year were better – on average over 1.5 points by Metascore, and 0.35 by user rating.

Leavers

There was nothing too concerning in the list of leavers from last year, with Persona 5 Royal probably the biggest.

The games that left in October 2024 were newer than those leaving in October 2023, but only just – and otherwise they were very close. They also had a lower Metascore and user rating (a good thing).

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Conclusions

While October 2024 seemed like a really strong one for Game Pass, it was heavily carried by Black Ops 6. When compared to October 2023, where we had Forza Motorsport alongside some big third party games (nearly all of which were very new games), it doesn’t manage to reach the same heights. We also saw significantly more games leaving the service this year, potentially as a result of the quantity over quality trend from 2023 now balancing out.

But there is a question (or perhaps, even an expectation), that we will see fewer third party games (and games in general) on Game Pass as Xbox’s first party studios begin to fill the gaps. With Indiana Jones, Flight Simulator and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. all in the next two months, it’s difficult to see much emphasis placed on third parties before Christmas.

No one can deny the impact of Black Ops 6, but Game Pass thrives on variety and quality, which we’ve not had enough of this month.

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Some notes on this data: We are only interested in the Game Pass Ultimate tier for this. We may expand to look at other tiers in the future. For the purposes of this exercise, where the console or PC version of a game is already on Game Pass and the other version also joins, we do not count it as an additional game coming to the service. In the same way, if only one version leaves, we don’t count it as a departure. Prices and review scores listed is the data as of the date listed below, meaning the prices & scores of games from the year previously (when used in point of comparison in this article), are likely to be cheaper than they would have been when they actually joined Game Pass and may have different average scores (especially user scores).

For Metacritic scores, we generally take the score from the platform with the most reviews, unless there is a reason not to (e.g. instead of taking Goldeneye 64’s 96 Metacritic score for the recent Xbox re-release, we opt to not give it a score as there are not enough reviews of that version). Data captured October 8th 2024.