Well, it happened. A week after new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma was reportedly telling employees that Game Pass had become too expensive for players, the Vole has followed through with an official price adjustment. As of today, Game Pass Ultimate drops from $29.99 to $22.99 per month, and PC Game Pass slides from $16.49 down to $13.99 per month. Regional pricing may vary (Ed: Doesn’t it always?).
That’s a big cut for Ultimate subscribers who’ve been eating that $30 price tag since last year’s 50% hike. If you bailed over that increase, this might be your cue to revisit.
There’s a trade-off, though, and it’s a significant one. Going forward, new Call of Duty titles won’t be joining Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch. Instead, fresh CoD releases will be added to the service roughly a holiday season later, meaning subscribers will be waiting about a year before a new title shows up in the library. Existing Call of Duty games already in the catalog stay put, and the rest of the Ultimate benefits, including hundreds of games, in-game perks, online multiplayer, and day-one releases from other publishers, remain intact.
It’s an acknowledgment that day-one Call of Duty on Game Pass was expensive to sustain. Whether subscribers will feel that trade is fair depends heavily on how much of their Game Pass time is spent in CoD versus everything else. For plenty of PC-focused subscribers like myself that stopped paying attention to it after the first Modern Warfare (Ed: Wasn’t that in 2007?), it may not register at all.
Microsoft says the changes respond directly to player feedback and that the company will continue to adjust. Full details on Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium, Game Pass Essential, and PC Game Pass tiers are available at xbox.com.