Like it or loathe it, we live in a subscription economy. Music, movies, meal boxes, and more are no longer things you buy once. They’re a constant draw on your wallet. Gaming is no exception, and while every major player in the sector has some form of sub for players—from PlayStation Plus and Nintendo Switch Online for consoles to Apple Arcade on phones—none of them offered quite as much for a modest monthly fee as Xbox Game Pass.
Depending on the subscription tier, the service gave players access to a significant library of titles and was available on Xbox consoles, PC, or via cloud gaming. While most of its competitors focused on back-catalog titles for their gaming subscriptions, Game Pass stood apart by including major first-party titles on their day of release for subscribers to its Ultimate tier.
Microsoft long claimed it was “the best deal in gaming,” and with new releases costing upwards of $70 per title versus a $19.99 monthly price tag on Game Pass Ultimate, it was hard to argue. Recent changes to the service, however—including some hefty price rises—have upset users in a big way, sending so many people rushing to cancel their subscriptions that the membership site crashed.
What’s Happened?
On October 1, Microsoft revamped the entire structure of Game Pass. Previously, and following an earlier rejig in September 2024, players had essentially four options—Game Pass for PC, Game Pass Core, Game Pass Standard, and Game Pass Ultimate. Going forward, Core is replaced with Essential, and Standard is replaced with Premium, while Ultimate retains its name. All tiers are now accessible on PC, although a dedicated PC-only plan remains available.
It’s not the rebrand that’s had people canceling, though—it’s the hefty price hikes that have come with the upper tiers. While Essential keeps the almost totemic $9.99-per-month pricing of Core, Premium jumps to $14.99 from Standard’s $11.99 (a 25 percent increase), and the PC-only offering goes from $11.99 to $16.49 (a 38 percent increase). It’s Game Pass Ultimate that’s proven the most contentious, leaping from $19.99 to $29.99. Price increases on subscription services routinely boil the frog and creep up in price slowly—just look at what you used to pay for Netflix—but a massive 50 percent spike overnight, the equivalent of $120 more a year, has caught many off guard.
It doesn’t help that it follows two price hikes on Xbox consoles themselves in the span of less than a year, at least in the US. In May 2025, the 512-GB Xbox Series S went from $299.99 to $379.99, the 1-TB Xbox Series X from $499.99 to $599.99, and the 2-TB Series X from $599.99 to $729.99. These prices rose globally, with prices reflected in each territory. But then, in September, prices rose again for buyers in America, taking those same models to $399.99, $649.99, and $799.99, respectively. Microsoft cited the increases being “due to changes in the macroeconomic environment”—read: tariffs—but the combined effect on pricing across the whole Xbox ecosystem really challenges that “best deal in gaming” idea.
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The Xbox Series X has had two price increases in the past year.
Photograph: Best Buy
What’s Changed?
The Game Pass price increases aren’t without their benefits, as an attempt to justify the rises in cost. Cloud gaming is now available on all tiers, after previously being restricted it to Ultimate, while the offerings at each level have been rethought.
Core used to be the basic entry-level option, mostly serving as a maintenance fee to allow online multiplayer features, but also throwing in a minimal library of 25 rotating titles in the Game Pass library. The new Essential tier that replaces it ups that library to “50+ games playable on both console and PC,” along with “in-game benefits in some of the biggest games like League of Legends, Call of Duty: Warzone, and Overwatch 2” (although what those benefits are is unspecified and presumably subject to change).
Premium, replacing Standard, enjoys a larger library still, with Microsoft promising “200+ games” for subscribers, up from around 50. The big change at this tier is the access to new release titles. Well, newish—Premium subscribers will now get access to “new Xbox-published games within a year of their launch,” although this excludes Call of Duty titles.
Ultimate gets the biggest overhaul, to try to justify that massive 50 percent spike. Alongside a 400-plus game library, it remains the only tier with day one availability for new releases. Here, Microsoft promises subscribers will get “75+ day-one games a year,” and that does include Call of Duty. It also now includes access to the Ubisoft+ Classics and EA Play catalogs, which were previously separate subscriptions, and from November 18, adds access to Fortnite Crew, providing in-game bonuses to players of Epic’s enduringly popular game-slash-platform. Ultimate also offers cloud gaming at higher quality than the lower tiers, up to 1440p resolution, with prioritized access and shorter load times.
At all tiers, Microsoft emphasizes the ability to earn credit (up to $25 annually for Essential, $50 for Premium, and $100 for Ultimate) through the Microsoft Rewards programs, just by playing games. That might take some of the sting out of the price increases, although many users are also complaining that the Rewards scheme as a whole has been “nerfed” and offers less return for their time.
What Should You Do?
The big question is whether the changes to Game Pass mean the service is still worth subscribing to. That’s going to vary between users, but affected players have a few options to consider.
First is to check whether you’re actually affected by the Game Pass price increases in the first place. Depending on where you are in the world, you may not be, at least not yet. As reported by The Verge, subscribers in some countries have received emails informing them that they won’t see their fees changing so long as they maintain their subscription.
Microsoft emailed subscribers in unaffected countries, saying, “You may have heard about changes to the price of Xbox Game Pass Subscriptions. At this time, these increases will only affect new purchases and will not affect your current subscription for the market in which you reside, as long as you are on an auto-recurring plan. Should you choose to cancel your plan and repurchase, you will be charged at the new current rate.”
There doesn’t seem to be a common link between the countries exempted—users from EU countries such as Poland, Germany, and Ireland have reported getting the emails saying they won’t pay more, leading to some speculation it was down to better consumer protections across the European Union, but so have others in India and South Korea. Either way, if you’re an existing Game Pass subscriber in these territories and you’re happy with the service, it’s probably worth letting your sub roll on for now.
If you are getting hit—and players in the US and UK definitely are—then it’s a great time to reevaluate the tier you’re subscribed to, particularly if your gaming habits have changed since you last looked into it.
If you’re not desperate to play any new releases immediately, dropping down to Premium will still provide access to a sizable library of titles to play, and bringing those newer games to Premium within a year will still be a draw. At $14.99 a month, it’s half the price of the new Ultimate tier and represents a saving of $180 a year by comparison.
If you are keen to play the latest and greatest games as soon as they arrive, Ultimate does remain a great deal. If you see yourself playing more than five new releases a year at launch, then even $30 per month represents a saving, and that’s before you get to the other benefits of the package. That 50 percent hike may feel like a bitter pill to swallow, but if you’re craving the latest AAA Xbox titles month after month, the pricey new Ultimate tier still represents a saving, even at $360 per year.
Conversely though, consider whether you’re being tempted by something you won’t really benefit from in its entirety. For example, if you’re a keen Fortnite player, getting Fortnite Crew bundled into Ultimate may sound like a good deal, but if you don’t play much else outside of that game, you won’t be getting much bang for your buck.
The Great Switch
The big risk for Microsoft is that the price hikes for Xbox consoles and Game Pass alike drive players elsewhere. Against a backdrop of sluggish hardware sales, rising prices on that hardware, and its decision to bring more of its first-party exclusive titles to rival platforms—Forza Horizon 5, Gears of War: Reloaded, and Sea of Thieves are among the previous Xbox exclusives now available on PS5—the Game Pass price spike could see users abandon Xbox as a native platform entirely.
For instance, a PS5 Pro retails at $749.99—add a year of PlayStation Plus Premium at $159.99, and you’re looking at 2 cents shy of $910. Sure, the library offered by PlayStation Plus isn’t as vast as Game Pass, but that’s almost $250 less than the Xbox equivalent ($1,160 for the 2-TB Xbox Series X and Game Pass Ultimate). The lack of availability for day-one titles on PS Plus is the big difference in value, but that saving goes a long way to buying a few games outright.
Forza Horizon 5 is one of the once exclusive games on Xbox now available on PS5.
Courtesy of Playground Games
The big downside to this option is that if you’re heavily invested in Xbox as a platform, then your purchases and progress won’t transfer. Bought a bunch of Xbox games outright? Then buy ’em again. Already spent hundreds of hours racing around Mexico in Forza Horizon 5? Too bad, start from scratch. It’s not just Forza either—all of the first-party games Microsoft is bringing to other platforms are looking like they’ll need to be bought again and generally don’t look to be included in those platforms’ own subscription services, so it could be pricier to move than to stay.
Buy Your Games
If you’re at the point where you’re considering jumping platforms, though, you might want to just go back to buying your games outright anyway. Subscriptions are an inversion of the old “teach a man to fish” idiom—sell someone a game and they pay once; sell someone a subscription to the game and they pay forever. Maybe for you, the best option is to break the cycle. Be free!
There’s a cost calculation here, though, especially for new release titles, but this option’s best for those who see themselves buying five or fewer new-release games per year. Accounting for an average launch price of $70 per title (and not counting deluxe editions, season passes, or other added DLC), that’s a $10 saving on a year of Game Pass Ultimate. A caveat: If you enjoy online multiplayer, you’ll need at the least the Game Pass Essential subscription, so you’ll have to factor in that $120 per year.
Buying your games may seem pricier on a case-by-case basis, but you actually own them—or at least an ostensibly perpetual license to them, if bought digitally. Your access doesn’t disappear when you stop subscribing, and you can wait for sales to pick up some keepers for cheap.
Physical media purchases are best of all but not without their own hurdles. The ballooning size of games has outpaced the capacities of physical media, meaning some releases, such as Doom: The Dark Ages, have only an installer on the disc. If a title is ever removed from servers, or those servers are turned off, you won’t be able to play it in future—even if you still have the disc. Thankfully, these are—for now—niche cases.
Whichever route you choose, the important part is to do the math and ensure you’re getting the most for your money. There’s definitely still value to be found in Xbox Game Pass, but if you’re not a hardcore user of all its features at the highest tier, it just became that bit harder to find.
