Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass Price Lowered, Removes Day One Call of Duty Titles - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 21 April 2026 / 5,699 Views
Microsoft has announced it is lowering the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
The price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will go from $29.99 to $22.99 a month, while PC Game Pass will drop from $16.49 to $13.99 a month. Prices may vary by region.
In order to justify the lower price, starting this year future Call of Duty titles will no longer join Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch. New Call of Duty titles will be added to the two tiers during the following holiday season, which would be around a year after launch. Existing Call of Duty titles already in the library will continue to be available.
"Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will continue to have access to hundreds of games on Xbox console and PC including current Call of Duty titles, in-game benefits, online console multiplayer, and major day one releases," reads the announcement.
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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Good move. $30 a month for Game Pass Ultimate was way too much.
If only you can add select games to your library like PS+ 🥱
What exactly is the advantage of this over what Game Pass has? All games on Game Pass are already part of your library and you choose what you want to download or stream.
Advantage > Some PS+ games are in your library forever. Games can leave Game pass catalog, making you lose access.
Gotcha. The previous comment didn't explain this very well.
Xbox 1st party games fall into this as long as you have a sub.
The price is still higher than before here in Brazil tho.
It was R$ 60, raised to R$ 120, and now decreased to R$ 77.
It's still R$ 17 (28,33%) higher than 6 months ago.
Nintendo lowering prices for newer digital games, Xbox dropping the price of gamepass a bit, nice.
New nintendo switch 2 games prices after the announcement of the price split are still the same digitally as they are in euros, nothing changed, how did they lower the digital price?
What changed was the physical price, which was $10 less than what they were in euros and is now the same.
I think it depends on the game right? Or more if it's a Nintendo game? Other publishers control their prices.
As for lowering prices, Splatoon's new game is releasing at a lower price than physical and therefore "lowering prices" but obviously this is the case if you consider the physical price is what they would have charged for digital as well anyway, like most other publishers.
But nothing is saying they original price was the lower value to begin with and the physical is a premium. ;-)
Both Yoshi and Splatoon, the two games announced after the price split still have the same price in USD as they do in Euros digitally, nothing changed, the prices did not go down digitally when compared to what they were between both major currencies.
They are lower than the physical price, indeed, that is right.
Physical was lower in USD than it was in Euros, until the announced price split, both games are priced the same in USD and Euros now after it.
You can take your own conclusion, for now we are 2/2 where the physical price now meets the once higher price in Euros, which was not the case before for other Nintendo games released before the price split, it was cheaper in USD.
So you're saying this game was going to be $50 physical without this move?
That is the logic, a physical game costing 60 euros would likely cost 50 dolars, before the split.
I honestly find it hard to believe they planned to release a S2 game at $50, if this is a budget title (Mario Tennis wasn't, so it was $70) it would be $60. Something doesn't track here.
More like:
"Nintendo increasing the price of physical games. "
Asha is proving to be quite the improvement over Phil and Sarah so far.
Ok, I’ve been rather critical of Xbox lately but this is a positive move.
This is a great move. This will bring people like myself back to Game Pass after I didn't resub after the last price hike. I'll wait a little longer to see what other changes they will make to Game Pass.
Imagine getting praise for reversing a mistake you made in the first place!
Asha wasn't part of the original mistake so I would say praise is okay when a correction is made from previous leadership.
Personally still too high for me to come back... But good to see
I'd love to have a Day-1 First Party Only tier for $10 (Minus COD)
Game Pass Price Drop???????????????????????????????????????
2023: Ultimate 12.99 € (without call of dutty)
2024: Ultimate 17.99 € (with Call of Dutty)
2026: Ultimate 20.99 € (without call of dutty)
That's a downgrade and price anchoring.
$7 a month (so $84 a year) was what "value" CoD added to the service? Not sure I believe that. I always assumed they raised the price to help it's sustainability, as day one games will hurt them in the long run and the rumoured 30% profits (revenue?) mandate we heard about was around then.
I guess it helps regardless and is much better value, instead of a price of a game every 2 months, now it's a game every 3 months.
maybe Microsoft can turn this around after all
Nice. I'll resubscribe now.
Hmm it's only the base game pass with streaming I'm still interested in though since I ran out of games that interested me on Game Pass PC.
Still almost twice as much as PSN with no real reason to be be and I guess this means they valued Call of Duty at 80 dollars. I wonder why the price of ther service went up 120 in higdsight in the first place. When you think about it, it meant they were making subscribers pay more for Call of Duty in the sub than you would pay to just buy the game.
no, it means there's another person responsible now who just look different at the price valuation and what it does to the subscriber numbers. It doesn't mean that all the extra price (or the lowered one now) is just because of CoD. It's obviously a part of it but they didn't just sit there "CoD alone will determine the price"
Yeah, it was really obvious CoD was leaving.
Still crap in my opinion. I guess COD players will be disappointed.
Itd more worth it now. They can remove fortnight stuff from it and drop it lower
I can see that viewpoint too.
Giving away AAA games Day 1 never made sense economically. If it's true for COD its true for other AAA titles as well.
This was inevitable.
And this is just the beginning of them removing more AAA day and date games from Gamepass!
CoD isn't being completely removed because it will join the service 1 year later.
