Xbox Game Pass initially felt like a reckless waste of money aimed to distract from the lack of exclusive hits on the Xbox One. Then it was the best offer in gaming thanks to a steady expansion of its Netflix-like subscription library of major third-party releases and critically acclaimed indie games. Now it’s bigger than ever and getting worse. Once touted as the promised land for Xbox gamers, it’s now become another dead end.
“For us, it’s about how we reach 2 billion gamers,” says Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer described the goal of Game Pass on stage at a tech conference in 2018. The subscription service would go beyond consoles and PCs and appeal to anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection. Over five years later, there are 34 million Game Pass subscribers, which according to Digital Trends it would be the eighth most popular service if it were a movie and TV streaming platform, neck and neck with Peacock.
Normally, Platforms try to reach a critical mass before the turning point of “insulting” is reachedBut instead of aggressively doubling down on Game Pass as the future of Xbox by continuing to increase value and keep prices low, Microsoft appears to be hitting the brakes on its risky subscription experiment, announcing not only the second price increase within a year but a significant departure from the ethos of “everything, everywhere, for a simple price” that originally underpinned this philosophy.
On Wednesday, Microsoft revealed an overhaul of the subscription gaming program confusing as the pre-order bonus table for your favorite Electronic Arts game. Game Pass will continue to have four tiers, three for consoles and one for PC, but the benefits, names, and pricing are changing. Most notably, the basic Xbox Game Pass subscription tier, simply called “Game Pass for Console,” is converting to Game Pass Standard, going up from $11 per month to $15, adding Xbox Live, and losing access to day one Game Pass releases and certain other games in the full Game Pass library.
The Game Pass library has already been fragmented once with Game Pass Core containing a very limited portion of first- and third-party Xbox games, and now it’s happening again, though we won’t know the full extent of the fragmentation until more details are announced in the coming months. Current console Game Pass subscribers will be stuck with it as long as their membership is auto-renewed. For everyone else, the only way to retain access to day one releases is to sign up for Game Pass Ultimate, which currently costs a whopping $240 per year, roughly the price of the frequently discounted Xbox Series S.
These changes occur randomly Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 The launch of the service in October, a likely bestseller of 2024, which apparently brought Game Pass’s internal calculations to the brink of collapse and then destroyed them. It is one of the games on which Microsoft spent $69 billion to buy Activision Blizzard, an acquisition whose main legacy so far seems to be mass layoffs and fewer exclusive titles. Play Diablo IVGame Pass’s comeback season was nice, but it wasn’t worth the closure of Tango Gameworks. a decision that appears to have been partly brought about by re-examining Xbox’s earnings following the completion of the historic merger.
When Game Pass launched in 2017, the Xbox One’s fate was sealed. A botched launch and a lack of first-party hits that could break through the noise left Microsoft out in the cold, so it bought a bunch of studios to bolster its portfolio and built a subscription service that Sony couldn’t compete with and that had the potential to grow beyond consoles. Xbox gamers have spent the first half of a new console generation waiting for all that to change, but that hasn’t actually happened. A standout showcase that didn’t take place at E3 this summer nonetheless looked to the future, or in the case of a new Gears prequel, the distant past.
But through it all there was Game Pass, the service you could recommend to friends and family without any restrictions or reservations. From day one it offered access to gloriole And ForzaHorizontimeless classics like Stand out And Elder Scrollsand some of the biggest indie hits of the year, plus a lot you would never have discovered otherwise. With Blizzard games and call of Duty should have done even better. Instead, they turn the service into something that feels more like a toll booth than a bargain. Instead of enjoying the freedom of a gaming buffet, you feel guilty about trying to make sure you get your money’s worth.
Nothing illustrates the value trade-off as clearly as what Microsoft is not Changes to Game Pass for PC. While the subscription increases from $10 to $12, you still get access to day-one games and remain free of the monthly cost of online gaming on consoles. Instead of $240 per year for Game Pass Ultimate, PC gamers can play BlackOps 6 with their friends for just $144. There’s a version of Game Pass that’s still the best deal in gaming, as it turns out. It’s just no longer available on Xbox. And maybe that’s the whole point: Having potentially cannibalized its own console storefront by training some of its players not to buy things, Microsoft is trying to poison the well just enough to make the purchase Indiana Jones or Confessors direct look much more appealing in comparison.
None of this is a business argument for why Microsoft should do things differently. It may well be that the best way for the company to draw blood from a stone at this point is to exploit its most loyal customers. But the withdrawal from Game Pass makes it feel like Xbox once again needs a new story to tell about its future and why it’s a platform worth investing in. Without it, the Xbox Series X/S generation of consoles once again feels like a jack of all trades that can do nothing right. I’m not the first to point out that without strong games, strong hardware, or strong services, You are just another Microsoft brand.
