Xbox CEO Asha Sharma: Game Pass 'Has Become Too Expensive' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted 8 hours ago / 1,902 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.
More Articles
At this point... I'd honestly prefer a rental service that's à la carte
$20-30 is too much for those of us who play 1 game per month and don't get to keep the game
Seems like the Call of Duty leaving it is pretty much guaranteed now.
take out Call of duty, and remove Day1.... Add Xbox titles like 3 months after release.... lower prices to like 9.99$.
Not everyday a corpo comes out randomly and says theor service is too expensive
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.
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.
