by
William D’Angelo
, posted 17 hours ago / 5,468 Views
Microsoft this week announced it is increasing the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate by 50 percent to $30 per month.
A former employee has told Bloomberg that Xbox lost $300 million in sales of Call of Duty last year on Xbox consoles and PC due to the game now being available day one on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. This is according to internal estimates.
“Game Pass hasn’t delivered the explosive growth Microsoft anticipated post-Activision, and they’ve realized their infrastructure costs don’t align with their pricing model,” Joost Van Dreunen, founder of the video-game analytics firm Aldora.
Microsoft had hopes Xbox Game Pass would grow to the point of being the Netflix of gaming. However, that hasn’t happened.
The service first launched at $10 per month in 2017 and a year later would offer new games at launch. As time went on the price increased and Microsoft would make day one games only available on the Ultimate and PC tiers.
Former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Kahn tried to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, however, the deal would eventually be approved. She took to social media and stated, “Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been followed by significant price hikes and layoffs, harming both gamers and developers.”
She continued, “As we’ve seen across sectors, increasing market consolidation and increasing prices often go hand-in-hand. As dominant firms become too-big-to-care, they can make things worse for their customers without having to worry about the consequences.”
The last known number of subscribers for Xbox Game Pass was 34 million in February 2024. Microsoft last July did announce Xbox Game Pass generated nearly $5 billion during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025.
The changes to Xbox Game Pass on October 1 included Game Pass Core rebranded to Game Pass Essential and Game Pass Standard rebranded to Game Pass Premium.
Game Pass Essential and Game Pass Premium do offer more benefits than before at the same price, which includes PC games and cloud gaming, as well as in-game benefits that includes Riot Games. More games are also available now on both tiers.
However, one of the main reasons to subscribe to Xbox Game Pass is for day one games, which now cost $30 per month on the Ultimate tier and $16.50 on PC Game Pass.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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