Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass was supposed to be the shining ray of light for gamers who wanted value: an all-you-can-eat buffet of both triple-A and indie titles, including unlimited streaming, for a low monthly price. Then the “low” part of that equation started going away, culminating in a staggering 50 percent price increase in October 2025.
Reversing course — sort of — mere months later, as Microsoft did yesterday, is Xbox’s first positive gaming step in a long time. And I have an idea for the next one.
A bit of history, for context. Xbox Game Pass launched in beta way back in 2017 and more generally in 2019, offering access to tons of both Xbox and PC games in addition to Xbox Live Gold (the Xbox’s paid online multiplayer pass) for $15 USD a month. At the same time it was just $10 a month for the “Xbox Game Pass for PC,” which at the time had “more than 100 PC games.” Microsoft’s offering would expand greatly and very quickly, as the company doubled down on Game Pass as the core of its game platform offering.
This is also one of the reasons it’s spent a hundred billion dollars or so on acquiring developers and built out a streaming backend, trying to make it so that they can say “This is an Xbox” for everything from low-power laptops to phones to cars. Game Pass is, to use a technical industry term, a big freakin’ deal for Microsoft: It’s nothing less than the cornerstone of the company’s strategy for gaming for this decade.
But even Microsoft’s pockets aren’t bottomless. Buying up mega studios like Activision-Blizzard and Bethesda will show up on the profit-and-loss report, and it was spending up to $50 million apiece for exclusives on the Game Pass service. The Ultimate tier jumped to $17 in 2023, then $20 in 2024…but was steadily adding both new and classic games to justify it. The price increased by a whopping 50 percent in October of 2025, up to $30 a month for the full-fat service, at the same time that gaming hardware and the Xbox itself were becoming less affordable. Suddenly the best deal in gaming was a lot less appealing.
Meanwhile the Xbox console was (and is) unambiguously getting its big green butt kicked by the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. Perhaps more importantly, Microsoft’s position as the de facto home of PC gaming is very much in question. Steam is an unstoppable juggernaut pretending to be a game store, and with the Steam Deck and Linux-based SteamOS spreading to other handhelds, and soon (maybe) the very console-ish Steam Machine, Microsoft is feeling the heat. Something had to give.
That something was someone: Xbox/Microsoft gaming CEO Phil Spencer. A veteran of the company and the industry for decades, he retired with at least a little dignity back in February. Spencer was a constant and appealing presence for Microsoft, and a lot of gamers (and games journalists) were sad to see him go. They were even less excited for his replacement, Asha Sharma, whose most notable experience was at Microsoft’s CoreAI product.
Gamers already wary of generative “AI” infecting various aspects of the hobby, the way it infiltrated and enshittified Windows 11, weren’t happy. And I’d be lying by omission if I failed to point out an ever-present undercurrent of sexism in the world of gaming. A change was certainly needed, but Sharma had an uphill battle in every sense.
Her opening move was a smart one, at least from a public relations standpoint. In a leaked memo, Sharma told the Xbox team that Game Pass had become too expensive after the hike to $30 five months before her promotion. She’s now made good on that assertion. As of yesterday, the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is down to $22.99. That’s still a hike versus the $20 price earlier in 2025, but it’s a more manageable one. The PC-only plan, which doesn’t include streaming, is $14 a month, and the very stripped-down version (which includes a small slice of streaming games) can be tried for $10 a month.
Cheaper Game Pass is a big deal. PCWorld’s team, including yours truly, recommended the streaming element as a cheap way to get a gaming fix without investing in expensive hardware. And Mark Hachman floated just such a suggestion back in February. Lowering the price — though not back to where it used to be — is an unambiguous improvement. With one big downside: Call of Duty.
Possibly the most high-profile game series in the world aside from Grand Theft Auto, COD is one of the jewels in Microsoft’s gaming crown after it acquired Activision-Blizzard. And getting “free,” day-one access to yearly COD games was a big part of the appeal of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate in recent years. Now that’s going away. New COD games won’t be part of Game Pass, though you’ll still have access to the existing (huge!) library, and games will appear on the service after a year.
I wish the price had gone back down to $20 a month, perhaps by stripping out some of the unnecessary elements that have been tacked onto Game Pass, like Fortnite Crew and EA Play. But as someone who hasn’t played any COD games since the original Modern Warfare way back in 2007, I’m not feeling the sting of its absence. More importantly, COD is a dependable cash cow for Activision and Microsoft — each new entry sells millions every year no matter what. So the Game Pass subscribers Microsoft loses by taking out that $70-a-year carrot will very probably be recouped by a bunch of straight sales, to say nothing of the continued microtransactions in each game.
It’s money that Xbox, and Microsoft, desperately need, while delivering more broad appeal to Game Pass. Gamers like me, more interested in the niche and cheaper titles the pass grants access to, are getting a win here…though again, not as much of a win as a $20 price would have been. I’d much prefer it if those less tangible extras were optional add-ons, a protein additive to your gaming smoothie rather than a non-negotiable part of the package.
What’s next, with Xbox console prices still way too high, along with the Surface and…well, pretty much everything else? I think Microsoft needs to read the room. People are anxious about pricing, and struggling to make ends meet. How about this: Subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for a year, and get a free streaming box. Something like the Chromecast that Google used to throw in free with YouTube TV.
The $50 Fire TV Stick 4K Plus works with Game Pass; offer a discount bundle with one and an Xbox controller. Or — since Amazon probably won’t play ball as it already has a promotion for its Luna game service — just partner with an OEM for a cheap, Xbox-branded Android device that does the same thing. Give people a way to play tons of games, on a TV, without spending [checks notes, holy crap] four hundred dollars on the cheapest Xbox Series S.
Call it the “Xbox Pass Edition” or whatever. Game Pass is still a great service — hell, it includes two of my most-played games from last year, Hades II and Absolum, along with the absolute smash hit Hollow Knight Silksong. Call it 500 games in a box (while making it clear that it’s a subscription service) and get that intro price as low as possible. It’ll sell like hotcakes…or at the very least, sell a lot better than a $400 “budget” console.
Yes, I realize I’m essentially suggesting Google Stadia 2.0. But the Xbox brand is in a much better position to do this, and Game Pass makes a lot more sense than Stadia did, since the latter demanded gamers buy full titles on a service, rather than a Netflix-style subscription with unlimited access. I think it could work. Hell, in 2026, I think it could once again be the best value in gaming.
Author: Michael Crider
Source: PCWorld
Reviewed By: Editorial Team
