Xbox Game Pass Gets Price Increases And New 'Standard' Subscription Tier

This feels a long way from we will not be increasing prices and games will still be available day one.

As always with any corporate mouthpieces, it's what they don't say in their carefully worded statements that speaks loudest.

The line must go up. And since Xbox put all its eggs in the gamepass basket the only way for the line to go up is for gamepass prices to go up.

lol at this company

They've held out a long time compared to other streaming services. I support them and want the service to actually make money for them. At $20/mo it's still a steal.

Yet again us console users get the short end of the stick, now gamers on PC only have to pay $11.99 USD to play day one games, while console users need to pay almost double, plus the paid online requirement, it’s a triple spit to console users.

Remember when everyone was going "see the fear mongers lied, there's no tiers, there's no price increase?". That's 2 price hikes in a year.

$20 a month now. $240 a year plus tax. This is where I get off the bus. I could buy 5 games a year on sale for the same price which is probably exactly how many I'd play on GP. Goodbye monthly renewal!

They held out exactly 1 year since their last price hike on game pass.

I support them and want the service to actually make money for them

Yes, when Amy Hood passes the collection plate to me I'll be sure to put in some extra cash for Microsoft. These are the types of charities I like to support.

Even being a huge Xbox fan and seeing lots of value in Game Pass, seeing them now including online with the standard subscription is good, but the rest just seems like a bad move. The fact that they’re now going to lock specific games behind more expensive subscriptions is so lame and reminds me of Netflix’s subscription change, and the move Microsoft is making seems to be a push to get people to spend more money on the expensive subscription. Again, very lame.

Its even worse than expected, and pretty far from what MS said earlier. Not good!

@NEStalgia I had the opportunity to stack up 3 years of Ultimate but I kinda regret it now, I don’t want to support the service, ever since Tango’s closure I really really don’t like the direction Xbox is heading.

Also $20 bucks a month is just ridiculous, I’d rather buy a game on a sale upfront and own it forever.

And with that I'm out.
Xbox is close to dead anyway so I'm just getting off the ride before the corpse starts to smell.

The price of everything has gone up so this is no surprise. $20 a month to play day one releases and a ton of other smaller games I would have otherwise passed on is worth it. It cost more than $20 for my wife and I to get Chipotle and I'm not going on Chipotle forums and crying about it.

As someone who primarily uses Game Pass in order to play online with friends, I'm pretty indifferent to this price raise.
I was planning on downgrading to Game Pass Core anyway.

I tend to actually buy any game I want to play so missing out on the whole Ultimate library doesn't really mean much to me.

What I would really want personally is the option to only pay for the online play.

@IOI "I really really don’t like the direction Xbox is heading"

This is a lie. It implies you know the direction they're heading. You can't know that. They don't even know that.

Normally, I'd grit my teeth with this kind of price hike if Microsoft actually delivered big games on a consistent basis. But they don't so what am I paying for exactly? The occasionally interesting indie game? Sure. Perpetual access to Bethesda games? I already bought the ones I wanted. Call of Duty? That's not it for me. So I don't know anymore.

Surprise of the century.

Queue the "sky is falling" crowd. 😂

Do I want an increase? Or course not. But if you do the math GP is still by far a good deal.

@M20B25 the "fanboys" need something to be indignant about.....

@Retron close to dead? Bless your heart.

Another good reason to buy games and not subscribe.

I knew this price-hike was coming when, six days ago, there was an article titled "Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, And Tony Hawk Rumored To Hit Xbox Game Pass 'Very Soon'" on MSN.com.

And how long until the next inevitable price increase?

I have Ultimate stacked for almost 3 years so I'll keep playing until it runs out. It's really crappy that on PC it's cheaper than console, should be the same. I'm curious to see what the wait time is for new games coming to the service however, I've really never played games day one because they're never actually ready on day one. I do like having cloud and EA play though. I have over 3 years with whatever time I get to build up through rewards points to make a decision. Really would be easier to do this increase for them AFTER they actually show a steady release of big games each quarter. We've never been there yet, looking like we will be going forward....but it hasn't actually happened yet.

I don't know if it was Xbox that bought Activision, or Activision that bought Xbox... They do not stop "annoying" their users with all kinds of clumsy decisions.

Even so, I guess it makes sense, Game Pass is by far much better than the rest of the services, in games, day 1 releases... what it offers for what it costs is crazy, and with the arrival of Activision games (and COD) they should balance it.

@101Force Aren't those all games that can be bought for about $20 each in the sales anyway? At least that way you'd own them.

This was an inevitably, so I’m not surprised. I do feel bad for console players, much like myself, though. Anyone in their right mind should have expected this price increase, and it’s only going to go up in price once a slew of Activision games comes to the service, and especially so when Call of Duty arrives. I won’t be surprised if it’ll go up to $30.00 or more by the end of next year.

@NEStalgia I'll have you know that they are clearly going.....that way....duh.

@Moby
It's only a good deal if you like the games on the catalogue. For my household, Gamepass is worth the money because people are actually finishing games even departing ones. I had to stop the PS Plus sub when I noticed that people are not playing the "free" games or downloading stuff.

@MrMagic / @NEStalgia : I'm in Canada and received an email today saying I'm going to be charged $4 more for Game Pass Ultimate starting in September. I assume y'all in the UK and the US will get similar emails soon.

Looks at the next two weeks of games…

Neon White (Xbox Day One)
Tchia (Xbox Day One)
Flock (Day One)
Magical Delicacy (Day One)
Dungeons of Hinterberg (Day One)
Flintlock: Siege of Dawn (Day One)
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess (Day One)

Yeah, $20 a month still sounds pretty good.

Good thing my Game Pass Ultimate is good until mid-2026.

@IOI You're in for a rude awakening if you think Sony never closes any of its studios nor jack up the prices on PSN.

They should have a free plan that has ads / commercials which will bring in revenue and allow many others who are cheap to use .

Then a second tier with the catalog of games no first day releases but multiplayer

Then third with online / pc and console with cloud

I only wish Xbox could’ve gotten Ubisoft and to join the family to make game pass make sense but I just don’t see it in the long term h less they own half of the ips on game pass .. it’s way Tom expensive to be paying one company 50 million to have that game on it .

@cardcrusher29 so it's only of value if you finish a game? I mean if that's how you value it, who am I to tell you otherwise?

I have PS Now (courtesy of some deep discounts) and I do not recommend for the price. Once, my coupons are all out, I won't be renewing it. Honestly I only got the PS5 for Ratchet & Clank and God of War. I was so not amused having paid full price for the latest God of War. I didn't finish it and would have been less upset if I had it via access to PS Now. My hubby has enjoyed a few of the PSN games at least.

It's more usage/playing instead of finishing as the metric I use to decide whether to keep the sub. The Apple TV+ is getting heavy use because it's the only paid video streaming we have for now. Otherwise, they'd have to watch ads with their video streaming When people ignored the PS Plus Extra games, we had to switch to only Gamepass

The younger relatives and kids enjoy their Spider Man games and that ridiculously hard PSN souls like exclusive. I saved money when buying through Ebay. That reminds me, I have to buy the latest Astro bot and Ratchet/Clank this Black Friday. The latter is holding its price too damn well even used.

@MrMagic Next year around July time. $21.99 next year.

I'm sorry, locking "day 1" games behind the most expensive tier is lame. Wonder how the devs of those games feel about it. Now they are using "day 1 with gamepass" against their subscribers. They need to change the phrase to "day 1 with ultimate gamepass tier."

How shocking. Here's your CoD charge whether you wanted CoD or not.

Oh look, it’s the new COD tier price no one saw coming

They're pricing me out!

I cancelled mine for now.

I'm paid up to November of 2025. But I know I will not be renewing after.

Hard to tell which is better for me. I like Ultimate but Game Pass Standard sounds not bad, since all you lose is the EA catalog which is not that big, and I don't need to play games day 1.

I've always been positive about Xbox, but I'm getting really tired at how they treat console users.
We pay for the console, and then we always have to end up paying more than PC users?

@Lup i still don’t understand why paying to use your own internet to play with other users that also paid to use their own internet is still a thing

@Fishysensei in exactly the same mate. I don’t give a toss about subsidized gamepass. I just want Xbox live back for online as I always buy games that interest me.

@NEStalgia Lmao I agree, but from what we can see they seem to not only don’t care about console users, but actively despise us and wish we rather play on PC or competing consoles, at this rate next gen I think I’m gonna grant them their wish.

Not sure why many are bemoaning about this slight increase for subsidized gamepass. Corporations also have bills to pay like electricity and property taxes to name a few. Data centers cost a lot of money. I think MS spoiled so many modern gamers with this service. I’m someone who still buys games physically and spend more in a year than the average gamepass user whom has more titles to play than me at anyone time. Even with delisting always being a possibility. People need to remember that gaming is a hobby. And like all hobbies there is a cost of entry. I don’t like subsidized gamepass but it’s a great deal for consumers.

I get that people are annoyed with the price increase but Game Pass is still great value. Do I like COD? No, but that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the extra value it provides to the service. Plus, being realistic, we expect more Activision games to come to the service, not just BO6 so the increase for that, along with general inflation, is fair. You can still stack up on the subs, and buy codes at the cheaper price now and use them as and when it makes sense for you as well. I've got just over a year left on my sub and will be doing just that.

Still a massive value. In the last month I've played Rolling Hills, Octopath 2, Callisto Protocol, tried out Steam World Dig and Humanity, currently playing Immortals of Aveum, and will definitely be playing Flintlock and Kunitsu Gami in a few days. That's roughly a year's sub right there

When I was a kid I'd rent a game at the Video Zone for a few days once or twice a month and hope my save wasn't deleted. I'd get one game on my birthday and one at Christmas. Maybe one more with my own money during the year. Occasionally I'd buy used, years after their release

I never played so many games, especially new games, before game pass. A few extra dollars changes nothing for me. Hell, I used to pay tobacco companies more than that daily to slowly poison me to death lol

After Sony's miserable current gen showing, MS had my respect with the "for the gamers" and for awhile it was. That's gone now. I've slowly become a PC player again after few decades of exclusive console gaming. I have all the current consoles but I have rethink that in the future with game prices going up.

Instead of raising game prices, how about driving down the development costs because something is definitely wrong there with broken and mediocre but expensive first-party titles.

Get my Ultimate through CD keys, haven't paid the full price in a very long time

They've just about killed xbox as a hardware brand and will seemingly milk Gamepass until it dies too. I know they've never been great but modern tech CEO's have never been more short-sighted.

What was even the point of buying Activision? How on gods green earth can they get a roi from a $70bil black hole?

Have to laugh. I literally called this a few months ago.

I knew only the highest tier would get new games.

https://www.purexbox.com/news/2024/05/xbox-game-pass-will-see-changes-when-call-of-duty-arrives-rumours-suggest

Comment #66

Why not just scrap the middle tier altogether? It only seems to exist to push people straight to Ultimate, at least Gamepass console was a genuine option if you didn't care for online but I guess they want day one players to be paying much more

Reward Points cover my GPU subscription 8-9 months of the year so I reckon this’ll cost me an extra 50p per month. Doesn’t seem to me like the sky just fell in.

Oh well another day another Dime.
I’m fully paid up until March 2025 then I guess I have to make that decision to stick with GPU or not, or even Xbox or not.

It is a simple process bring the top end quality AAA big campaign games, then I stay.
If they bring sub par not that good AAA games that are not up to much then I go.

Like I always say it’s all about the games.

This is going to drive a few folk away for certain. I'm surprised by the new structure of prices and glad I've till September to brew over it. Back playing on the steam deck due to family life and lack of TV time has effective gaming.

Gonna be really honest let’s stop the bloody moaning it’s a small price increase.
From £12.99 to £14.99 for GPU.
THAT IS A £2 increase that is absolutely nothing in today’s cost of things.
It’s like 1 hours wages total a month in the UK what’s the issue.

No one likes a price increase but they are a fact of modern life, sadly.

Even with this slight increase Ultimate still offers value to me personally so I will keep using it.

Gamepass standard seems like a poor move. Gamepass having day 1 titles is it's USP compared to other subs (excluding Ubi).

If they needed a cheaper their that you'll want to upgrade I think a cloud only tier would work.

I think this is dogpoo it goes against what Microsoft themselves have been pushing since they started pushing Gamepass hard.

It also begs the question, if you dont get games ‘day one’ with standard, when do you get them?

Finally the kick up the arse I needed to cancel my sub. Imo gamepass has been near worthless for a long time so no loss 👍

At least 1 or 2 above already mentioned, CDKeys sells discounted codes.
Been using them from for many years for both PS and Xbox subscriptions.
Between 20 and 35% discounts. Always has been.
NEVER paid full price.

Yeah, I'm out. It already didn't make sense for me, as I don't get to play enough GP games for it to be financially smart.
But I'm happy for the people that seem overjoyed with this price hike, and hope you get another one soon.

Game Pass is just paying to have a backlog. Well, with the new tier, maybe that means MS is ready to start making more than 1 AAA game per year again?

I just got another 3 months from CD Keys which takes me up until December. Was just under £22.

As people have said, it isn't a drastic increase but the fact they keep notching it up and more that they lied about making changes after blowing so much money buying up studios is what rankles.

On the whole it is still value for money for me and mine, especially buying codes which I'll be interested to see what price they are later this year.

If they're going to continually bump it repeatedly though....

What about the regular console tier? The one that's currently £9.

Not that big a deal. It's still well worth the price if you play a lot of games. If you don't then it's not for you and that's fine too.

They've made huge changes to their business model and made huge purchases to increase the platform. They still seem to be figuring out where it all will settle, hopefully with these changes it stabilizes for a while. Same thing happened with rewards and people lost their minds, but it seems to have stabilized and is in a pretty good spot now.

@themightyant

Thanks, missed that entirely somehow.

This will certainly be the end of me subscribing directly from Microsoft. It'll be either be discounted codes from cdkeys and the like or just abandon gamepass. They kept the same price for so long, and now we're onto yearly price increases and I just can't tolerate that.

I must have missed the detail - so I'm stacked on ultimate until Jan 2026, will that remain until I come to renew and then I'll be charged the full price then?

@Blofse, that should remain, yes.

Who needs hundreds of ***** games you will never play for a monthly sub. I stopped using gamepass a couple of months ago and have not regretted once. Guess it helps that I'm picky about the games I play. I just buy them.

Lol. That is definitely the last Xbox console I’ll even own. Whether you play a lot or casually, it’s just not worth it. I’m starting to build SFF PC next month, to completely replace my XBSX, my docked Switch and hopefully in the future, PS5 as well.

It’s become obvious they have screwed the pooch a bit, they’ve spent over 80 billion on acquisitions and they want returns. And they now putting COD in Game Pass day one will lose them a lot in sales.
It’s now £180 a year for Game Pass Ultimate, but £120 a year for PSN Plus Premium, so you are paying a lot more for those games on Game Pass. I actually slightly prefer the PS model as you get game trials of big games not in Game Pass, and if course you cannot play your games collection on Game Pass unless it’s in there. PS5 remote play works great, not sure of Xbox does the same?

With rumours of Xbox going all digital next gen and Sony not, it seems Xbox will be all about you renting games, and Sony will still be about you owning them such as it is. I can also see Xbox increasing prices again, one things for sure I’d never believe a word that comes out of Microsoft’s mouth about Xbox!… Phil flat out lied about Game Pass price increases.

When my GP expires, it’s stacked at the moment, I’m out and won’t pay for it again. I can only see it going up and up in price.

Second price hike was expected. Probably means they are going to put the ABK titles soon?

I got stacked GPU/ 3 years for almost -50% of the "official" price so I'm good. Although it's still a good value, I wouldn't pay the "normal" price every month.

Your “pro consumer” Xbox ladies and gentlemen!

@Vaako007 sadly for you that is no longer Xbox’s primary business model, Game Pass and game rentals all the way from them now. If they do go all digital next gen, which is rumoured currently, then they will control when games are delisted, Forza Horizon 4 will be delisted this year for instance, and when they disappear off GP. Not like the 360 days…

I have gamepass ultimate until mid 2026. A lot of it has been through the reward points. Plus the 3 years for £1 and converting EA play to GPU deal. With COD getting added it's going to save me £70 a year. So £140 saving until I need to extend my sub. Even then I'll just be saving the reward points up if they're cutting down the amount of time you can have stacked. Aside from just COD there are loads of other games coming out this year and in the future that are great savings as you don't need to buy them. EA play being part of it is good value as well. No need to buy EA games as they eventually get added. Will be dropping my PS plus sub down to extra when it expires next year as the premium level is not worth it.

@Krzzystuff Don’t forget though, as I understand PC Game Pass does not get access to as many games as the console version hence the price difference, plus you are paying for online play on console too, they still charge you to play online games on Xbox consoles, can you imagine them doing that on PC and the outcry it would create?

@themightyant Yeah there's a lot of layers that make it especially bad. The biggest is that this is a 25% price hike in 1 year after the platforms selling point was built on its value. 25% is a significant change to its value proposition. And 100% on console only as you said. Is it another 15% in a year? At what point does it become really poor value? Maybe they want to kill it and roll back day 1.. With them who knows?

Second is, yet again Microsoft says one thing, paints one image to coax trust, then just turns around and reverses it a few months later. Every time they right the ship and look stable they go and announce they're erratic and unstable, and worse untrustworthy politicians, where ever word most be parsed for meaning, every time. A product not good on its word with random changes isn't enticing. That's the biggest problem Xbox has. They not only don't earn customer trust, they actively erode it. But it's not just Xbox, that's nadellas Microsoft in all areas. Ask Intel.

Honestly if they just said "tiers" when asked about call of duty the optics would be better instead of doubling down on "DAY ONE**" (on a tier we haven't told you about). The Xbox community was built on a trust contract. That contract has definitely expired.

Objectively it's technically a good value. But the higher the price goes the market it's a good value to becomes narrower. And the inability to trust their pricing structure stability makes the long term value dubious.

I don't know how they expect to increase slowing subs by raising prices. Or increase console sales by making the platform less approachable.

Again quarterlies above product success. Again, standard nadella. But don't worry, the screenshots of your PC are totes encrypted, honest! (Syke!)

@S1ayeR74 I own, on dvd and bluray, less than 1% of tv shows and movies I've ever watched. I donate almost all my books once I've read them. I don't need to own every game I've ever played. I'm fine with renting 95% of them and buying the few I know I want to keep. As long as there are new games coming out I'll never realistically go back and play games I've already completed anyway

An extra 2 euro ain't bad but can see myself dropping to standard subscription if nothing new is coming out haven't played a gamepass game ina while lately just been addicted to elden ring since the dlc released and I haven't even bought that yet I'm addicted!!

@AverageJoseph Good for you, you’re one person, does not mean there are many people who like to buy their games. Or collect books, films are also different, it takes a couple of hours to watch a film, some games can take 30 for the base game alone.

@NEStalgia

‘I don't know how they expect to increase slowing subs by raising prices. Or increase console sales by making the platform less approachable.’

Excellent points. It’ll be interesting to see if COD day one has any meaningful impact on Gamepass subs, that’s the only thing I can see that they have that could potentially make a big increase in numbers.

@NEStalgia @themightyant could be worse. You could just announce you can have GPU on fire stick. Let people sign up. Then 2 days later tell them there’s a price increase.

Oh wait.

Hello Gamepass Core! I missed you!

Still happy they bought Activision simply to own CoD???? One of the worst decisions for gamers ever 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Standard should keep day one games and be cloud only. Pitch it as the tier for people who "don't need an xbox to play xbox" via Fire TV, Android App, Smart TVs, Quest, and so on (have it a requirement when we can play our owned games off the cloud). Have it work on console too, but if they want to play natively they need ultimate.

just picked up (via CD Keys) 12 months Core for £35. That'll do me!

@themightyant They really do. Every time the narrative changes from doom they do something the shatter all rebuilt trust again. Their brand identity is starting to be "the two faced console"

I think there's a threshold in pricing that shifts it from being a great companion to your game library to instead bring an alternative to owning a library only really valuable to players that don't intend to own a library at all while not being appealing to those that do. Imo they're now on that doorstep.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner "Feel the burn!"

At last we have proof that infinite monkeys typing in infinite typewriters will in fact not eventually produce Hamlet. It's really just an incoherent mess after all.

This doesnt suprise me to be honest. I had actually turned off my auto renewal a couple of days back and looking at this I am glad I have. Realistically any game thats on game pass that i want I would be able to pick up for the monthly fee or less anyway and with my online gaming days long behind me then the cheaper options offer me no benefits at all.

Oh well its been a good run.

To the people that say oh it’s just £2. Have to remember us who comment here are enthusiasts so we are more likely to swallow it.

It’s casuals and especially families who will be more squeezed by these rises.

Hahahaha, what a surprise!

So we've gone from "day 1 with Gamepass", to "day 5 with Gamepass after paying extra for early access" to now "day 1 with Gamepass but only on the most expensive option".

And PC players still get it cheaper than console players.

I only have gamepass to play with my mate on pc but I'm not paying that much a year for it.

If it's still cheaper to be an xbox player than be a playstation player I will remain green, I love a lot of the features of systems and quirks of their first parties, both xbox and playstation, but xbox selling point for me will always be which one is cheaper since I have a family to feed

I’m safe until March 2026. Stacking 3 years of the 1:1 Gold conversion offer was a great decision in hindsight! When that runs out I’ll very likely downgrade to Core. At least I get to try out South of Midnight and Fable before that day comes.

The only genuine upside to this reshuffling of tiers is that Game Pass now finally includes multiplayer as standard on console. It was always baffling to me that the previous mid-tier option lost access to multiplayer. Now at least multiplayer is a standard feature and the progression between the tiers makes more logical sense; pay more and you get access to more games.

@MrMagic Probably as long as it takes Sony for their next price increase, their last one was huge and gave nothing extra.

I'm an ultimate subscriber anyway, and the increase costs me £2 a month extra and people are losing there *****???? That's a bottle of milk, a loaf of bread. Geez if it's too much for you, get off the train but don't go spouting all of your ridiculous hyperbole as you leave.

@Scirius depends how you look at it.

Ps5 v X same price. PSPremium £120 v GPU ultimate £180. However you can often pick up 12months of premium for £60ish. Ms don’t do sales on GPU but they do let you buy from key sellers (currently). Xbox has rewards that is better than Ps stars. GPU has day 1, premium has more games.

The value is extremely similar. For comparison of as much alike as possible.

Of course there is then the cheaper series S or play over fire stick etc

20 USD for a month is still a steal for what you get. That's like one budget game or a cinema ticket and some snacks in Sweden. Happy to pay that! Just wished they could give us 4k streaming of games like PlayStation.

For everyone here saying $20 is still good value - you are right, but only for the sort of hardcore audience that frequent Xbox fansites and can consume more than $20 worth in a month. For the rest of us this is an impossibly high barrier. We simply don't have the time or inclination to play that much. If Microsoft are serious about growing subs this is not going to do it.

I wonder if the experiment to release the games full price on other consoles has opened their eyes to the benefit of selling games outright vs subs.

I have been subscribed to GPU since I bought the series X in 2021 but I am now done with it. Unsubscribed first thing this morning

@awp69 I think this is extremely subjective. There is one game you listed that I will try. Most of them I don’t even know what they are.

So what does it mean to not have "Day 1" games?
When does the standard tier get the games then? Day 2? Not at all? EXPLAIN.

Im definitely not paying £15 a month for Ultimate. I think I'll pay the standard tier. ***** Xbox for this bs.
Literally a Call of Duty tax. And I'm not paying it.

Well I believe no one here is happy with a price increase. If someone is happy with this he must see some therapist.

That said, for ME it still is a great deal. I've finished 18 games until now this year so the sub price is already paid up. Also I don't usually replay the games I've already finished so owning them it's not important for me.

Half of the comments here are "I'm cancelling my sub right now" but we all know they will be here tomorrow and next year (still subscribing)
The other half are our known trolls that just appear in the bad news, just ignore them, they will come back to Push square in a minute.

@themightyant I surely understand that and agree with you. It's not a good thing at all.
I was just saying that still is a good deal for my use.

I think they should have made the standard tier day 1 game pass but without Cloud Gaming. 90% of gamers don't use cloud gaming

I think when my sub runs out I will take a break and reassess. I have a backlog across systems, maybe I will tackle that for a bit and see if I miss GP

@FuzzieGinge88 Don’t forget, that 69 billion for Acti was on top of the 7.5 billion for Zenimax. The investors want to see a return on that as does the board, and whether Satya or Phil is making the decisions on that is hidden in rumours only. They just announced their Xbox app for Firestsick owners, which is a cheap device really, and then announce another price increase to use the service in the app.
I don’t believe a word MS says about Xbox anymore (this deal won’t mean Game Pass increases.. increase Game Pass price twice in a year), and I won’t be shocked if next gen is their last ever with physical consoles, despite what they say the console sales figures are way low, we all know it. Because they’ve made it too easy to play without an Xbox.

@themightyant As they say, the most popular games are COD, Fortnite and FIFA. All the mass casual gamer wants is online play for those games and that’s it. It will be a pretty hard sell to pursuance them to pay £15 a month for COD and online play. Some people only ever play one of those games.

All of these subscription models are not sustainable...across the board; It's all going to come crashing down, & regardless of what happens, it's the consumer that will be missing out as more and more content gets locked behind complicated BS paywalls.

silent phil should be ashamed.

i can't wait for the "game pass is dead" headlines.

There's no way I'm paying that. Currently subscribed for about €6 a month, stacked for the next 2 years using the Gold conversion method. When that runs out I'm probably done with Gamepass. Been using the other platforms way more in the last few years anyways.

@Retrokingdan Same, I’ve been getting my GPU from CD Keys for years and never paid more than £9 but we’ll have to assume we’re going to have to pay a little bit more now.

Lol at those who are being negative towards the price increase, it’s only an extra £2 a month that is nothing these days. We’re going to be getting a ton of Activision games added to the service and it doesn’t matter if you don’t care for them as the choice will still be there and it will add even more value to the service.

I’ve said it before that I mainly subscribe so I can play online, for those of you who say your going to stop subscribing, how are you going to play games online unless you only play solo?

Personally I would love a game pass tier that was just the xbox exclusives and nothing else.

Hmm, getting very close to being too much. Plus, it just rankles a bit to put tiers in like that. I'll look at getting a 12 month pass from a CDKeys website but if there aren't any deals then I think I'll be out. Been trying to cut down the monthly direct debits quite drastically the last few months so any price rises are pretty much automatically out.

@Sifi Yeah and it's good job their whole business model hasn't just devolved into pushing Gamepass... oh, wait.

I have about a year left of my 24 months of Ultimate. While the selection has been pretty solid, I don’t play shooters, so the price hike is definitely unjustified for me. My primary drive to get the Series X in the first place was to play Starfield on day 1, which I barely touch. Once my subscription ends, the Xbox will probably hit eBay or I’ll give it to my boy.

It makes sense from the Microsoft's viewpoint but not that much from the customers' viewpoint. The real-world scenario is that typical users play only couple of new games a month but like to build a collection and occasionally return to old games.

This means, that Sony approach that still keeps the model of giving 2 or 3 older but mostly AAA games a month in PS+ Essential to "keep forever" is better than GamePass Core with slow additions that, moreover, can still be removed anytime, or the GPU approach that gives you half thousand of games, out which only several can be actually installed on your Xbox due to SSD limitations but also lack of time of a typical gamer.

That's why I ask Microsoft to return to the pre-Gamepass Live Gold model giving 2-3 older good quality new games each month plus keeping the already acquired forever!

There has to be a line somewhere, and I think it is here.

Will unsubscribe from ultimate next month. I'll just save the £15 per month and spend £180 in the Christmas sales to buy a stack of games to play over the next year.

@S1ayeR74 I’m a wishful thinker for the gaming industry. And I’ll still hope for a physical console even though the evidence points to what you state. Corporations are all gearing us up in a forceful manner to accept indefinite rentals on their terms through subscriptions. It’s already there across the software industry. Even car companies are trying to add subscriptions for functions that exist on one’s car.

@Retron me too. My current subscription ends in September, then I'm heading over to Playstation.

It was clearly more games and more acquisitions meant the service was expanding, this was going to being additional costs whatever they claimed. They said anything they could to get the deals pushed through without backlash as a business that’s what you do. It was obvious this was coming.

As with all sub services different people find differing values, COD will be a massive pull for some and well worth extra money and for other not.

Unfortunately the narrative and belief by many this wasn’t coming derailed a lot of discussion within the acquisition discussion, I was vocal in my opposition because I don’t play cod and didn’t want pay more for game pass as it wouldn’t offer me the extra value.

The morale of the story is allow discussion, sometimes accept the obvious and occasionally challenge brands even the ones you love.

I’m sure plenty will still pay this fee. This was always the plan.

@Isca this is what I do. I’ve picked up the Xbox exclusives cheap physically. Even Forza Motorsport.

Gamepass is great. It’s just with steam deck ps5 Xbox X and switch I don’t need to pay £15+ a month.

It took years of saving but building a PC was the best gaming move I've made. We're not charged extra for multiplayer gaming, we're not (quite as) impacted by these price hikes and best of all, the Steam store has proper sales and price reductions. I'm saving a lot of money in the long run providing I have the willpower to not buy every game I'm interested in when it hits a sale.

I will say that Gamepass is still good value on console if there are games you want to play on the service. Compare it to say the higher tier of Netflix which mostly has mindless if not painfully average content compared to the best three or four video streaming services. It's all about the cost per hour of enjoyment for me. Going to sports events and live music has become unaffordable to most and I'd argue an awful waste of money compared to $20 a month for hundred's of games including new releases. It's all open to personal interpretation nonetheless.

Edit: you can also subscribe and unsubscribe at will which depending on your free time can be exceptional value if like me, you can occasionally cram in a few less lengthy games in a shorter span of time.

My Game Pass Ultimate just conveniently expired on the 7th and I didn't bother to renew it. I just don't play as many games as I used to. There's no way on Earth I'm paying MS $12 a month for PC Game Pass and $15 a month WoW subscription. WoW is going to win that fight every single time.

This stinks. I found that I couldn't play games on-line that I already owned with just core for some reason (like you used to be able to do with Gold), so I had to upgrade to ultimate. I'm going to try the new "standard" but I fear the same issue.

@NEStalgia I’m feeling like you- my backlog of purchased games need to be addressed, some months I really don’t play that much and don’t really have the FOMO for day 1. I’m going to unsubscribe until I need to resub. That’s what I said to Netflix three years ago and still haven’t resubbed…

1.Most of us expected this for quite some time.

2. I will continue to sub to Gamepass (and PS Plus too).

3. I do think this is going to go badly for Xbox. Lots of posts here saying that this is still good value (true), but that is only part of the point. Xbox has been marketing exclusives day one as a huge part of this service. Now that is no longer completely true, and people are either going to be less interested or annoyed that the service they are locked into is not really what they were promised. Most of us here are really into this hobby, but more casual gamers may have a harder time accepting this.

4.A few posts here telling people they are overreacting. I find that strange. I have never understood the need of some people to police the reactions of others, especially when it is comments under a piece asking for opinions, and especially when it comes to how people spend their money. Gamepass still holds value for me, but it doesn’t surprise me that a price increase makes it less valuable to others.

@TJ81 Agree in a lot of ways, but PC has almost the same sort of Stockholm syndrome where you get to pay Nvidia $1000 for a $400 video card and it'll be $1250 next time no doubt. There's really no escaping it anymore. Gaming is no longer an equitable hobby, it's an uncomfortable relationships between the abusers and the dependent. Dealers and pushers no longer try to win your business, they push you to the brink and see how far they can go before you break.

@Foxx_64740 ""I'm cancelling my sub right now" but we all know they will be here tomorrow and next year (still subscribing)"

Nah, I'll ride it one more month until the change takes effect, and then drop. The appeal was it was a trifle of an expense and I get to try lots of stuff I wouldn't have and play the MS games cheaper than buying without waiting. At this price, it's an expense. I have a backlog. It's crossed a line I can't get much value out of the expense anymore. And it'll just get worse. MS games will join all other publishers as "buy it in a year on sale if I'm still interested in a year." What I'll consider going forward is if it's still worth it to drop to PCGP only from ultimate, or if the fact that it'll just keep going up in price until it's the same poor pricing as this really kills the interest in that too. Also remember in the US, sales tax is added to that price, different by state, national average is 6% so a $21.20 recurring bill starts weighing down the monthly statements...

@themightyant I think the prickly issue is, Game Pass had carved out a unique brand and market with its "day one" image and low pricing. With raising prices, and splitting into tiers, maybe its greatest risk is becoming "just another subscription like the others." Kind of like Xbox became "just another console like the others" (but is the one with Game Pass.)

Yeah it was "too much value" but that buffet feeling of "too much value" is what made it desirable. It's why most showed up. Rearranging the value proposition feels like a mixture of MS celebrating a victory lap at the 1.2k mark of a 10k marathon and MS biz people stepping in to interfere in a service based on spreadsheet values rather than understanding the market- and their confused identity, with ABK people at the helm, trying to run a publisher from within a platform, focusing on publisher numbers.

But as you say, success depends on volume in the subs market, and the subs were already saturating. Limiting growth artificially seems like a bad move. Who is the actual market? Console owners? There's only 35 mil and not all will sub. Fire stick owners? Will they even buy in at HIGHER prices? CoD players? What a horrible value for them. Casuals? They weren't buying when it was cheap let alone expensive. It used to be people like me, but at the new pricing, it no longer is. And again, it seems in line with MS's recent strategy to push all of their users out of their ecosystems.

Really you summarized the entire xbox customer experience with this reply:
" We don't know. They have haven't specified. What we do know is that there will be some games that will ONLY be on Ultimate according to their FAQ. I assume other games will come after different amount of times"

I think that sentence can be applied to every aspect of Xbox, it's always, "we don't know, we can assume it's, unclear, they'll figure it out later."

For me, for value, this really kills GP. The last price hike came close to killing it. It's not that I get no value from it as much as it then becomes cost-benefit to sub vs just paying for the games that are on it. The debate then became play it day 1 vs wait 6-12 months for sales. But the new GP tier kind of flips that value as well.

It all goes back to they do not know what business plan they want and they keep changing it on the fly to see what sticks. Which makes the customer experience poor. Before everything was about subs. Now it's all about publisher unit sales and aligning subs not to interfere. What will it be tomorrow? Roll 2d10 to find out.

The fact that the lower tiers don't even include all games (LOL Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Sports, TV) Once again, I can't even identify what the product IS or what to expect for payment. And they can't tell me. Because they'll figure it out later on a case by case basis. I'd have missed gems like Little Kitty Big City and Ghostwire without GP. OTOH is that worth $250/yr?

9th gen is the gen the joy of gaming got sucked out of gaming. It became a fight against bankers instead of the gaming industry now. I can't say "Xbox is worse than PS now", it's just that both of them suck, and Nintendo's always been abusive.

@CaptnDave Griping aside for a moment, if you purchased the game, you absolutely should be able to play them on Core, that's the entire point of Core, Core is just a renamed Gold. That's a tech support issue, not a tier issue. It's not working and it's supposed to be working.

Well, time for the daily X box doom and gloom cycle.

People complaining about $20 a month are the same ones that spend $12 a day on lunch

Value or not, these clowns outright lie to their fans.
I'd already cancelled GP some time ago as there direction was clear to me.

At that price I'd rather just buy my games. I probably only get through five major games a year. I don't have time to play all that comes that comes to subscription services anyways.

@NEStalgia ok, if that's what you think, then drop it. You're completely free to buy all your games, subscribe for one month only or whatever you may please.

@PKDuckman Who said anything about Sony? I already cancelled PS+ since the last price hike was too much and I’ve been quite outspoken about some baffling moves they’ve made.

But you know, Sony’s screwups doesn’t invalidate Microsoft one’s, the difference is that Sony is currently successful and can afford to have some misses, Xbox is trailing even behind Xbox One and yet they kick their console users in the balls every 3-6 months.

There comes a point with these subscriptions where I have to ask myself if it's really worth it vs simply buying whatever games I like out of it. I mean I certainly don't play all the games on offer regularly, there's only a few that I really keep installed.

We need a game pass that is like ultimate but just for Series S/X.

PC part is wasted...

What exactly is Core?
You only get 25 games?

$240 a year to not own games. $1,440 over the course of a 6 year generation…without additional price hikes.

Saw this coming from a mile away.

Another month in 2024 and another blow to Xbox fans.

It feels bad to be right. I absolutely KNEW they would increase the price of Gamepass after acquiring Call of Duty. That snake Phil Spencer lies again! My Gamepass ran out like 2 months ago and I'll probably never resubscribe again!

@BowsersBuddy
I want a version of ultimate but with out PC/Tablet/phone/TV/crapple/zune support!

I use an xbox, Nintendo or PlayStation for gaming! Nothing else.

I don't need to be charged for ***** I am not using.

@BowsersBuddy
Thanks for the explanation, these tiers are worded horribly and are confusing!

They should be:
Core: online play only (which sucks for having to pay for the game, for the console, for the TV, for my Internet service)

Standard Console: online with all games
Standard PC: online with all games

Standard mobile: use fire stick, zune, crapple, phones, tablets for streaming games only

Ultimate: everything above

How long before the "Day One" games get added to Standard tier? A year is what Sony give us paying for temporary exclusivity, now we'll get same treatment in house?

@Retron you've been riding a corpse? Pretty weird, bro.

I used to just renew Game Pass the few times a year they'd offer 3 months for $1. Now that they don't do that anymore for existing users, I only renew GP for a month to try out a new game or two that gets added that I may not want to buy immediately. As it stands, I'll renew for a month in November for MS Flight Sim 2024.

@Secryt you don’t happen to work for them do you ?The company has let us loyal true Xbox fans down multiple time this year alone. ‘Only on Xbox’ etc. they are pushing us over to their rivals, something I thought I would never say.

Of course I don't like paying more, who does? What they could've done instead is just introduce a lower/cheaper tier w/o day one releases and left the price of Ultimate the same. However with their recent studio/publisher acquisitions - including putting one of the best-selling games in the world (COD) on Game Pass day 1, it was inevitable they'd have to increase the prices. That or have their subscription numbers significantly increase - which they haven't.

This does not affect me, nor is it surprising. Game Pass Ultimate is worth it even without Day One first party. Still, GPU includes those titles, discounts on purchase, along with MS Reward points for playing. I am stocked up due to those points. Regardless, I would pay the monthly sub fee if need be. Twenty dollars is the cost of buying lunch outside for one day.

P.S. That family tier was never coming to US/Europe; that has been obvious for some time.

@themightyant I'm in a similar situation regarding the cost of GPU and MS reward points (pushing expiration into 2028 shortly). If it were somehow a financial issue, I'd simply cancel one of my streaming service subscriptions or subscribe to GPU discontinuously.

I have to say, though...Ryan McCaffrey is a goof and has grown tiresome. He only attributes the phrase "stepping on rakes" to MS Xbox and never to Sony and Nintendo screw ups. Nor can he make a video without saying, "banger/bang-ger," or "this/that ain't it." I've grown to dislike him.

Already cancelled my core/gold sub. Just ran out last month. Begone with ye evil subscriptions! Ye who drain mine wallet dryeth!

This increase is neither surprising nor troubling. It is still a great value.

I remember paying $5 for 2-3 days at blockbuster in the 90s. That was for just 1 game. We get hundreds now, including day 1 aaa games for ~$5 a week. If we factor in inflation and income, people are spoiled today. (I earned 3.75/hr at my job in 1994, took an hour and a half to rent a game)

I cancelled a few months ago, no regrets. I have Baldur’s Gate 3, Dragons Dogma 2, Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth, Diablo 4 and bunch of other titles and backwards compatible games to keep me plenty busy.

@Steelydanman I don't feel let down. Like anything, it's a business. A business I enjoy and choose to spend my money at. One I hope continues so I hope they're making shrewd business decisions that aren't guided by 'feelings.' Playstation shows what happens when you're slow to change, they made just $600M in profit last year.

Yeah. That's what digital subs do. Next they will include a tier w a ton of ads. Does anyone here need me to look further into my crystal ball, or are we learning?

Thought the entire point of Gamepass is that they have 1st-party release Day One, but this new Standard tier forgoes that. What is also up with Microsoft getting rid of Gamepass (console)? Is Microsoft against their own brand?
There are reports that this price increase is to secretly make everyone pay for the next CoD game if they want to play it or not? If that is true, then the corporate dimwits has really lost the plot.
I say, if Microsoft thinks that this new structure will make more people convert to Gamepass in droves (for CoD), then they have their heads in the clouds. Might have the opposite effect?

I’m out when my sub ends next year. Not remotely worth it, unless you plan on playing lots (and lots) of 3rd tier games.

And with that, my series x is now an expensive blu-ray player.

Microsoft and 180 are becoming synonymous.

Now that i know that the call of duty games will arrive on it. Its still word the money.
I stopped my subscription when it was announced.
But yeah they have to make a profit. And with the games coming its worth it. Next month i will hop in again.

You really need another $15 from us Microsoft?? Cmon!!

@SingleStooge "Is Microsoft against their own brand? "

Are you new?

@datamonkey Nono, The Xbox 180 was last gen. This gen we get the Xbox 365!

No issues at all. I play more games now than I ever have. All thanks to #GamePass. It’s part of my phone contract anyway so i don’t really notice it that much.
They are just giving more options.

As usual, we have to have some with hysterical reactions.

Well at least now you get online with it. So that's good. But these prices aren't really worth it. I think cloud gaming should have it's own tier, where it's just cloud only and it's only £5 a month hehe.

@themightyant I mistyped — my membership currently expires Nov. 27, 2026. So, it is about to cross into 2027, not 2028. Two years and 5 months to go. That's purely fueled by rewards points since June 2023. I changed to 1-month GPU auto renewal from redeeming 3-month GPU, as it works out to less points.

Lately, I've become lazy about earning Edge, Bing, and mobile points. I've been doing the same routine for years now.

@themightyant Thanks for the tip about 3 months of Core being a better deal. Coincidentally, I started receiving notifications that the 1-month GPU auto renewal is ending August 12, 2024.

@Stocksy

Now unsubscribed from Ultimate. Plan B in place

Anyone fancy a new multiplayer game called Corporate Greed?

We went for a beach walk today in a beautiful Northumberland vilage. The official car park was £6.50 for 3 hours. We rejected that and parked nearby for free, and then bought pies for the England vs Spain match tomorrow night for £6.50

You get what you pay for, I suppose.

Been a while since I've been in the comments here but it's been only for the recent decision Microsoft has made. Been a fan of Xbox for 20 years and I think this scummy decision on taking advantage of their loyal base is all I needed to stop putting money into their ecosystem. I'll move on from Xbox after this generation and keep my Series X just to play my existing content. No more new purchases save the Elden Ring DLC. Microsoft truly messed up for the last time with their fans because of their own business mistakes.

@YourNameHere same, I'm out of Xbox after this gen. It was going so well too! Pretty much stopped playing my other consoles but now that ship has sailed.