Xbox Adds Nine Titles To Game Pass Essential In New Surprise Update

Welcome to your latest Xbox Game Pass upd... oh, hang on a minute, Microsoft didn't tell us about these! Yep, over the weekend, nine more titles have been showing up as newly-added to Game Pass Essential, and they haven't yet been formally announced by Microsoft at the time of writing.

However, they're all here and showing up as playable with an Xbox Game Pass Essential subscription, so we're going to cover them anyway. It'll be interesting to see if Microsoft announces this batch anytime soon - but for now, here are the nine new games on XGP Essential (thanks, True Achievements):

In case you missed it, Outbound is also rolling out to the main Game Pass Ultimate library today, so if you're on the pricier tier or are interested in upgrading to it, that addition is worth a look as well.

We'll link to our coverage on that one down below (featuring some early reviews for the title), alongside the full list of Game Pass Essential titles - as of what is now a surprise May 2026 update!

What do you make of these surprise addition to XGP Essential? Talk to us about them down in the comments.

[source trueachievements.com]