Microsoft are reshuffling their Xbox Game Pass subscription tiers and hiking the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass in certain regions. You’ll now need to pay $29.99 a month for Ultimate – a 50% jump, with pricing for places outside the US to follow. PC Game Pass subscriptions are going up from $11.99 to $16.49 monthly – around 40 percent higher.
“We understand price increases are never fun for anybody, but we’re trying to reinforce by adding more value to these plans as well,” Dustin Blackwell, director of gaming and platform communications at Microsoft, told the Verge in a briefing. “It’s something we don’t take lightly, and we’re listening to the feedback of players and the community to try to provide them with more of what they’re asking for.”
Microsoft are attempting to sweeten the pill by means of larger game catalogues per tier, expanded access to their cloud gaming services, and various other perks detailed in full on the Xbox Newswire.
Ultimate now includes access to various Ubisoft games via Ubisoft Plus Classics, plus the Fortnite Crew service, which spans a load of seasonal Fortnite stuff. Ultimate subscribers will also get access to the poshest version of Microsoft’s cloud gaming service, which includes 1440p resolution support and bitrate improvements on certain devices. Microsoft are also promising to increase the number of Xbox games coming to Ultimate at release day.
Meanwhile, Xbox Game Pass Core is being rebranded to Xbox Game Pass Essential ($9.99/month, around 50 games), and the Standard plan is now Xbox Game Pass Premium ($14.99/month, around 200 games). Both tiers now include access to new cloud gaming features alongside PC games. While neither of these services will cost more than Core and Premium in the US, they’ll see pricing adjustments in some regions. Again, more to follow.
PC Pass subscribers benefit the least from all these changes, seemingly. “The only change happening for PC Game Pass subscribers is that they won’t be getting Ubisoft Plus Classics, but they’ll be getting about 50 additional Ubisoft titles across PC Game Pass,” Blackwell told the Verge. “It will continue to get day one titles.”
As Eurogamer note, Microsoft’s Game Pass price hikes come in the wake of both record returns and mass layoffs. Game Pass earned them $5 billion last year, while Microsoft saw an overall 18 percent increase in revenue to $76.4 billion. Microsoft have also recently bumped up the price of their console hardware in the USA. Meanwhile, debates continue about whether videogame subscription services are good for participating developers.
Microsoft are also currently the subject of a consumer boycott over their business partnerships with the Israeli military during the latter’s assault on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, which a UN commission of inquiry has now formally defined as a genocide. The Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement has specifically called on people to cancel their Game Pass subscriptions until Microsoft divest fully from the state. The company recently announced that they would block Israeli military access to Azure and AI services used for a specific surveillance project that violates their terms of service, but they continue to do business with Israel’s armed forces at large.
This article has been updated with some extra information about the PC Pass changes and a link to an article about the viability of subscription platforms at large.
