Xbox Game Pass Price Hike Announced, Along With Major Changes To The Service

Microsoft has revealed a host of changes to Game Pass, the biggest of which is a major price hike of $10 for Ultimate subscribers. PC Game Pass is also being retired and rolled into the other tiers. Read on for a breakdown of all the changes, or check out the table at the bottom of this article.

First up, there’s been some name changes. Now we’ve got Xbox Game Pass Essential (formerly Core) and Xbox Game Pass Premium (formerly Standard). Ultimate gets to keep its name.

PC Game Pass is being retired. Existing customers can keep the subscription going, but will face a price increase from $11.99 to $16.49.

Pricing remains unchanged across the two lower tiers, but Ultimate subscribers are now going to have to pay $29.99 per month to get all of those day one Xbox “exclusives”. That’s a $10 increase over the previous price. Pricing outside of the US has not yet been confirmed.

The lowest tier, Xbox Game Pass Essential ( ($9.99, £6.99, €8.99/month), has now been expanded to include a library of 50+ games across console, PC and cloud. Microsoft also claims users will be able to earn up to 25,000 in Microsoft Reward points, but keep in mind the Rewards program just got nerfed because you can no longer directly exchange points for Game Pass. Instead, you’ve got to use the points to get gift cards, which you can redeem on your account and then use the balance to purchase Game Pass.

Xbox Game Pass Premium (($14.99, £10.99, €12.99/month) also now covers PC, console and cloud and promises 200+ games. Notably, Microsoft is promising that all Xbox-published games, like the upcoming Fable, will be available in this tier within one year of release. 50,000 worth of reward points will also be up for grabs.

However, Call of Duty titles are excluded from that one-year promise. Whether this means Call of Duty games just won’t be coming to Premium or whether it means they might take more than a year is currently unclear. Very sneaky, Microsoft.

Finally, we have Xbox Game Pass Ultimate ($29.99, £22.99, €26.99/month). It will continue to get access to Xbox-published titles on day one and will provide 400+ games. Microsoft is promising over 75 day-one games per year, which will be a mixture of Xbox-published stuff and third-party titles. But do you get anything else for your $10 extra a month? Well, yeah. Ubisoft Classics and EA Play are both included in the Ultimate tier. although EA Play was already a part of the service. Fortnite Crew will also be added later this year. Finally, 100,000 worth of reward points will be available.

The price hike for Ultimate likely reflects that Game Pass remains an unprofitable service for Microsoft, although the company refuses to publicly reveal subscriber numbers or any other relevant details.