Xbox Game Pass Changes Incoming - New Standard Tier, Price Increase, More - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 09 July 2024 / 5,818 Views
Microsoft has announced a number of changes coming to Xbox Game Pass.
Starting tomorrow, July 10 price changes will go into effect for new members of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Xbox Game Pass Core, and PC Game Pass. Game Pass for Console will also no longer be available for new members and those who have automatic payment renewal enabled will be able to continue to have Game Pass for Console.
In the US, the price for Game Pass Ultimate is increasing by $3 to $19.99 per month, while the price of Game Pass Core will increase from $59.99 per year to $74.99 per year. PC Game Pass is increasing by $2 to $11.99 per month. Current members with recurring charges will see the new prices starting September 12. For the complete list of the new prices click here.
A new Game Pass tier is being added that will replace Game Pass for Console called Xbox Game Pass Standard that will become available in the coming months. It will be available for $14.99 in the US.
Xbox Game Pass Standard, unlike Game Pass for Console, will include the ability to play online console multiplayer, as well as access to hundreds of games. However, it will not include games day one. Some games available day one via Game Pass Ultimate will be added to Xbox Game Pass Standard at a later date.
Here are the breakdown of the different Game Pass tiers with the new prices:
- Xbox Game Pass Core ($74.99 per year) - 25+ games on console, online console multiplayer, and member deals and discounts
- Xbox Game Pass Standard ($14.99 per month when it launches) - Access to hundreds of games on console, online console multiplayer, and member deals and discounts (No day one releases)
- PC Game Pass ($11.99 per month) - Day one releases, access to hundreds of games on PC, and EA Play (Note: Online play is already free on PC).
- Xbox Game Pass Ultimate ($19.99 per month) - Day one releases, access to hundreds of games on console and PC, online console multiplayer, member deals and discounts, EA Play, cloud gaming, free perks every month
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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" However, it will not include games day one." There goes Day1 on gamepass.
Only Ultimate tier, for 20$ pr month will have that. This is the cost of putting Call of Duty on gamepass.... and the price increase, should just about cover the expected losses, they will suffer for it.
Isn't the console version superior in terms of content? That was my understanding, though I could be mistaken.
I had the PC version last year but I cancelled after three months (two month trial). Most of those "hundreds of games" were a bunch of sequels from big franchises and I realized that I could get a lot more variety just waiting for Steam sales.
It's not a huge difference, there are 508 games on Console Gamepass currently and 471 on PC Gamepass. Some of the games that are on console Gamepass but not PC Gamepass include: Dead Island 2, The Quarry, MLB The Show 24, Rare Replay, Brutal Legend, Doom (2016), Ryse, Fable 2, Gears of War 1-3. Halo 5, and Terraria. However, PC Gamepass also has some games that aren't on console Gamepass, including: Manor Lords, various Sim City games, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Cities Skylines 2, Jade Empire, Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, Crisis Trilogy Remastered, League of Legends, Valorant, Quake 3 and 4, Fallout 1 and 2, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Starbound, Age of Empires 1 and 3 Definitive Editions, and Rise of Nations Extended Edition.
(i) You only save money from the hypothetical $40/month situation if you were planning on purchasing a new game every month at full price (from Microsoft). Are you sure $40/month would save you money? (ii) The “value” that you receive from the service is a non-permanent license of ownership over a solid catalogue of titles.
In other words, Microsoft has got you by the throat: Once you subscribe, you’ll either have to front any-and-all price hikes, or lose access to (what would likely be) a big chunk of your gaming library.
I would say for most $40 would price a lot of people out. But than again if video games are your main hobby it's not too bad. I spend $400 a year on running shoes for my main hobby, so if gaming is your main hobby $480 would be what it is.
Considering how quickly non-Nintendo games devalue, are you sure you are saving money?
You would save money if you didn't have the subscription at all... You don't ever save money if you are actually spending it in some capacity.
I was an Xbox Gold Subscriber since 2002, so over 20 years... Microsoft lost me as a subscriber when they pushed Gamepass and stopped Games with Gold.
I don't really play games online on Xbox anymore as the community isn't what it used to be during the Halo 3 Xbox 360 heyday.
But I was genuinely content paying $50-$60 AUD a year on Gold, especially when it came with games for free.
Guess it's just an end of an era... I have avoided the subscription tidal wave, I don't have Gamepass, Nintendo Online, PSN, Netflix, Disney, Spotify and the hundred others and my bank account is thankful I guess.
Dunno about that, sadly, Sony followed Nintendo’s strategy and PS5 first party games are still launch MSRP.
Sony's go on sale though. Picked up Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut digital and Horizon Forbidden West physical, both for 50% off.
Yeah, same as Nintendo, I got BOTW for $27 around 2018-2019 as with many other Switch titles as well.
Have you considered reaching for help?
Then it must fit your taste. Personally, I don't play nearly enough games that are available on GP nowadays to justify $20 pm, never mind the games that I'm interested in, but aren't on the GP or never will be (other platform exclusives). For effectively $240 per year RENT price, I could BUY all GP games that I play now (often heavily discounted, especially on the PC) and still have spare change left. I don't dislike the idea, I still have my GP subscription valid, until next year, but with this change it's simply not worth it. Trust me, there are many more re-tiering and price hikes to come, not to mention the worse one ... out-of-nowhere delisting of MS own games, like FH4, so it's also a matter of trust, which in my eyes, they completely lost with this one.
Lemme predict their next move in a year. "We decided to raise the price once again!"
Reminder that MS said they wouldn't raise the price of Game Pass because of the Activision acquisition, raising the price because of CoD is different obviously.
Vindication for Sony who always said that giving away Day 1 first party games as part of a subscription was not a sustainable business model.
At least microsoft is giving us gamepass whats sony doing? Conplain about it? Big win for you lol
Sony offers 3 tiers of PS Plus subcriptions that offer a wide variety of games. Many people kept saying that Gamepass would force Sony to offer their 1st Party games Day 1 through a subscription, despite Sony repeatedly saying they would never do that because it doesn't make financial sense. Microsoft was the one who buckled and changed their policy first.
Another lie they told regulators and consumers
New users will only be able to stack a maximum of 13 months of GP on consoles btw.
got until September 18th so best stack a couple years on why it's still cheap.. i have mine til mid 2026 done it end of last year (cdkeys upgrade track) but the conversation ratio will probably now change aswell
3 dollar increase is cheap. People buy expensive new phone every year or coffees every morning which cost more then 3 bucks a month more lol
yeah and the box of cereal going from $5 to $8 is only three bucks. And so is the bag of grapes going from $4 to $7 only three bucks. And the same can be said for frozen meals, fast food, bread, meat, household appliances, all your other subscription services, etc. But when added up, you realize that this seemingly innocent price hikes is actually contributing to a larger deficit, which’ll eventually add up to hundreds of dollars per month out of your pocket (as a consequence of corporate greed). Is this still cheap?
MS's hardcore fans will move whatever goalpost that is needed to justify their MS purchase. Shaping identity around a brand that really does not care about you really strange, rational people know these price rises are bad for people's wallets and are not worth the investment.
Not hardcore here. I always found the initial price for when they released gamepass as far too cheap for the value they provided. It was very obvious that it would have gone up when they bought Activision and they have made it clear that it was going up eventually in the
future. I am based in nz and one brand new game ranges from 95-120 so having gamepass ultimate at 25 a month is very cheap.. I have played at least 7 of those ,95-120 games Already and it's only half way of the year. If you do the maths I have saved heaps already lol.
So MS is meant to be the hero here? when like you pretty much said every other company has and is doing it.. Is it right no but thats not the point here..
How many of us here buy a new mobile phone like apple or Samsung every year?, how many of us here eat takeaways more then 1 times a week?, how many of us splurge on drinking at a club or at home with friends or partner?, how many of us buy coffee from a cafe or Starbucks daily?, how many of us pay for streaming services for movies?. Alot of us will have one or more above especially new phones..that alone will cost more then the cost of gamepass ultimate a month. I am sure we can go without with some of the above lol
I suspect at some point in the future Core will be dropped in favour of Standard.
Yikes they are not shy about these price increases, no matter how you slice it it's a way worse deal than it was a few years back.
How so?. You will get Ms games eventually not on day one with the cheapest option. PC gamepass and ultimate hasn't changed apart from 3 dollars month which is extra 75 cents a week. That's less then a coffee lol
So for people on Xbox, they now have to subscribe for ultimate to get day 1 games?
A pc of 1500 dollar will blow a 4 year old console out of the water. I can build a RTX4070 build with that kind of money. Which is lightyears ahead of Xbox Series in basically any game. With 750 dollars you can probably make a RTX3070 build these days which is still far superior. That 250 dollar you earn back in a few years. And basically every big Steam on Steam supports Xbox.
A 1500 dollar PC is 3 times the cost of series x. I would hope it blows it out of the water
.but it's not 3 times better though. You can't get 750 brand new PC for all of it's parts, let alone a 500 dollar build PC with equivalent specs. Someone has tried it and it had to have own most of the parts and buy second hand and still didn't make it.
Once again MS slammed their dick in the door.
Hey! No kink-shaming!
The best way to play gamepass is... PC!? Yup, Xbox console is dead.
This is just the beginning
I expect between now and 10 years every game company had a verry expensive gamepass.
Ahh the glorious digital/streaming master race era
MS is about to lose a ton of subscribers.
To quote a Simpsond episode, “Sometimes I think you WANT to fail!”
$70 billion on ABK and now all their major AAA games that everyone has been asking Xbox to release are getting closer to release.......yeah this was going to be a hard pill to swallow.
You can just smell the innovation...
But most telling is the dead silence from the Game Pass super fans who were all so certain of the glittering perfect future of gaming at the start of this generation. Seriously, I want to know who Ultimate actually makes sense for. How many full size games can you really play per year? I´d rather that limited number be from my free choice of all available games, not just MS´ limited offering they over-paid for and must now milk their fans dry for. Like, without trying half of one´s game purchases will end up being on sale or below launch price. The lower tiers of course seem to resemble Sony´s PS+ model. Which the super fans would hardly acknowledge as a viable subscription model. Yet here we are...
Alot. I have played more then 10 full sized game . About to finish eiyuden chronicles. To put in perspective I have gained 10k in achievements so far this year which helped me to reach 100k Total
There are a lot of games I would have never played without gamepass. Sometimes I will want to play something but refuse to buy it. GP is the bridge for A LOT of games.
Subscribers don't have to play everything to get their moneys worth. I easily play enough games each year to cover the cost of Ultimate. It's a good problem to have if you ask me. Plenty of choices because not everything that comes to the service is going to be for everyone.
And still no killer exclusive. When are the games coming?
If your not growing in subscription numbers, then all you can do is raise prices for existing customers, and maybe create a new cheaper tier.
Or if you used 70 billions to acquire activision and you are about to put a game that last year sold +20 millions at 60/70 dollars for "free" you need to get that money from somewhere lol
Billion not Billions. Why does this website insist on saying it wrong all the time?
thanks for the info :)
SO much this. I don't think MS want profits from Activision to drop, as a result of gamepass. Spending $70+ BN, and destroying its profit margins, isn't the plan here. Thats why Day1 is going away, and prices for gamepass are riseing to cover CoD expected losses from gamepass.
The $70 billion is capital and so doesn't affect profit, it goes through the balance sheet. If you look at their FY24 Q2 press release, net income was $21.9 billion and the acquisition was completed (assuming they paid then, I can't find specifically when they paid). If they didn't pay $70 billion, profit would not have been $91.9 billion.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/earnings/FY-2024-Q2/press-release-webcast#:~:text=Earnings%20Release%20FY24%20Q2&text=Microsoft%20completed%20the%20acquisition%20of%20Activision%20Blizzard%2C%20Inc.
What it did affect though was cash.
They cant afford a "new cheaper tier", when they plan on putting Call of Duty games in gamepass. The losses for doing such, will be too big. (obviously they can afford too, but, they want to earn profits)
They are still trying to compete with PlayStation for gaming dollars so they need to get more aggressive with pricings. Way more aggressive, cos they're getting one a one sided beatdown right now.
It is still the best deal in gaming.
As much as I don't like price increases, I think it's fair to say, Game Pass value has always exceed the price people pay and now it's finally catching up to what it should probably cost. We all knew the price was going up eventually. Accessing day 1 releases such games like; CoD, Indiana Jones, Avowed, Age of Mythology, Fable, Perfect Dark, Doom, etc. along with and the huge numbers of 3rd party games still makes this the best value of any other game subscription service.
Essay Pro
