For years now, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass has set itself apart by offering subscribers launch-day access to new first-party titles in addition to a large legacy library of older games. That important “day one” perk is now set to go away for all but the highest tier of Game Pass’ console subscribers, even as Microsoft asks for more money for Game Pass across the board.
Let’s start with the price increases for existing Game Pass tiers, which are relatively straightforward:
- “Game Pass Ultimate” is going from $16.99 to $19.99 per month.
- “Game Pass for PC” is going from $9.99 to $11.99 per month.
- “Game Pass Core” (previously known as Xbox Live Gold) is going from $59.99 to $74.99 for annual subscriptions (and remains at $9.99 for monthly subscriptions).
Things get a bit more complicated for the $10.99/month “Xbox Game Pass for Console” tier. Microsoft announced that it will no longer accept new subscriptions for that tier after today, though current subscribers will be able to keep it (for now) if they auto-renew their subscriptions.
Is it? That’s $240, or 3 launch day AAA games a year, plus a slightly older sale game. Microsoft doesn’t publish that many games that people want day one, and you can build a big library of games of all scales relatively quickly if you’re willing to spend $240/year on games and are moderately patient with sales/used games. And many of the games people are enthusiastic to buy on launch aren’t from Microsoft and aren’t available until they’ve been available at reasonable discounts. I’m not sure how much you save with the annual discount, so maybe that’s a little better, but a lot of their library are games you could find used or on sale for $20-30 at some point (or cheaper).
I do personally actually prefer PS’s “we’re not including our games day one” approach because I think it allows them to properly invest in real single player experiences knowing that more people will actually buy them, but $240/year will buy you a lot of library.