Microsoft has dropped the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate from $29.99 per month to $22.99 per month, with PC Game Pass being reduced from $16.49 per month to $13.99 per month. For UK subscribers, Game Pass Ultimate was £22.99 per month and now will be £16.99 per month, and PC Game Pass was £13.49 per month and now will be £10.99 per month. Both changes are effective immediately.
As a result of this fall in costs to the service, Microsoft will also remove new Call of Duty games from inclusion as day-one releases in either service. Instead, future Call of Duty titles will be added “during the following holiday season (about a year later),” according to Microsoft. Call of Duty games that are already part of any tier of Game Pass are unaffected by this change.
In a post over on Xbox Wire, the company has noted: “Our players cover a wide breadth of geographies, preferences, and tastes, so while there isn’t a single model that’s best for everyone, this change responds to a lot of feedback we’ve gotten so far. We’ll continue to listen and learn.”
This follows a price hike to the service that we saw just six months ago that also introduced a controversial shake-up to Microsoft Rewards – ultimately offering less value to subscribers of the service that ceased receiving credits simply for being subscribed to Game Pass. But perhaps it’s not that surprising that we’re seeing Microsoft start to reverse some of the increasing costs of Game Pass now that new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is in charge.
Just last week, the new CEO reportedly admitted that the company’s Game Pass subscription model has become “too expensive for players”, suggesting that Microsoft needs a “better value equation”. Sharma has reportedly been targeting this facet of the Xbox ecosystem since she took over the CEO role from Phil Spencer back in February, following the shock news that the Xbox head would be retiring from Microsoft after nearly 40 years with the company. Apparently, Sharma has said it is”clear” the current Game Pass model “isn’t the final one”, adding the subscription service is “central to gaming value on Xbox”.
“Short term, Game Pass has become too expensive for players, so we need a better value equation,” Sharma’s leaked memo read. “Long term, we will evolve Game Pass into a more flexible system which will take time to test and learn around.” It seems like today’s announcement is the beginning of that cycle.
But a focus on pricing isn’t Sharma’s only impact on Xbox so far. Since taking over from Spencer, the new exec has scrapped the “This is an Xbox” campaign, and started pointing attention to the next generation of Xbox hardware, so far known only as Project Helix. Per Sharma, this hardware will “lead in performance”, though when exactly we will see it remains something of a mystery.
