Xbox CEO Asha Sharma: Game Pass 'Has Become Too Expensive' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 13 April 2026 / 4,174 Views
New Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma in an internal memo obtained by The Verge to Xbox employees stated there might be changes to Xbox Game Pass pricing.
"Game Pass is central to gaming value on Xbox. It’s also clear that the current model isn’t the final one," said Sharma. "Short term, Game Pass has become too expensive for players, so we need a better value equation. Long term, we will evolve Game Pass into a more flexible system which will take time to test and learn around."
Microsoft in October 2025 increased the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate from $20 per month to $30 per month with some added benefits that included Ubisoft+ Classics and Fortnite Crew.
Game Pass Core was rebranded to Game Pass Essential and Game Pass Standard was rebranded to Game Pass Premium. These two tiers now includes games on PC and cloud gaming, and have in-game benefits that includes Riot Games.
There have been reports that reason price for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate increased by 50 percent was due to the lost money of having Call of Duty available on the service day one.
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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Seems like the Call of Duty leaving it is pretty much guaranteed now.
At this point... I'd honestly prefer a rental service that's à la carte
$20-30 is too much for those of us who play 1 game per month and don't get to keep the game
I look at even Game Pass Ultimate and there's maybe 10 at most games I want to play at some point on there. And only a few soon. I can't justify the monthly expense. I already have NSO Expansion Pack and PS Plus Extra (usually Essential).
take out Call of duty, and remove Day1.... Add Xbox titles like 3 months after release.... lower prices to like 9.99$.
So has RAM, so has gas, so has food. Lots to fix Asha, good luck!
I've heard rumors of there being a new first-party only games tier and I think that would be incredible. A lot of people might have both systems, and only buy third-party games on PS5 - meaning just playing Microsoft-published games on the Xbox Series X.
maybe even remove day1 option.... have it be like 3 months afterwards, and only first-party xbox titles. That way you can still tempt some xbox users to buy games, while still getting something from those less well off. Keep the service cheap.
I never buy third party games. On PS5 as controller is too small for me and battery life is terrible for the controller and I prefer achievement points.
The only time I will ever buy a PS5 version is if the performance and graphics on the PS5 version is night and day difference over series x
Typical PR speech. I guess she want fully to follow Spencers way of handling business when your are terrible company. I dont trust someone, who come out and say that she dont know anything about gaming and then two days later post "her profile" where it turns out that, not only does she know gaming, she is also extremely hardcore gamer.
After 12 years of non sense, i cant believe that people here still believe anything that comes out from anyone from Microsoft.
Not everyday a corpo comes out randomly and says their service is too expensive
Damage control. She wouldn’t be saying it if Game Pass was doing well.
Damage control for what? Shes spot on and consumers agree with her
It's an internal memo, not a direct PR statement. On the other hand, it's possible it was "leaked" intentionally, to make the new leadership seem more "gamer friendly," similar to the actions Microsoft took after the Xbox One fiasco.
So, a cheap tier full of ads then?
Potentially that or a new tier between Premium and Ultimate that includes day one games minus Call of Duty and doesn't include Fortnite, Ubisoft+, etc.
IMO, they need to remove some of the bloat from Ultimate (Ubisoft, EA, Fortnight) to bring that price down to circa $20 (perhaps you could add those on at a discount plus netflix to bump up the price if you wanted)
I don't believe they will do an Ads tier, 3 is enough and the First party only tier that has been identified in the backend could be for Netflix only
