In all the years I’ve covered the games industry, I struggle to think of a single one where Microsoft didn’t fumble the bag in some way. After starting 2025 with some measure of hope, it feels like every other month brings a new aggravating decision (sometimes two in a matter of weeks). Global Xbox Series X/S price increases, layoffs and that bizarre effort to hop aboard the $80 train in May with, of all games, The Outer Worlds 2 (though I suspect it would have tried the same with Black Ops 7). Even more layoffs and project cancellations to kick off July, followed by walking back its $80 pricing on titles.
The ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X created some positive buzz in August during Gamescom. Then, in September, another price hike for the Xbox Series X/S impacted the US market. You could now spend $800 on an Xbox Series X 2 TB Galaxy Black Edition – $50 more and technically less powerful than a PS5 Pro, that too for a console that’s only seen declining revenue in recent years. Make it make sense. Oh, and the Xbox Ally and Ally X cost $600 and $1000, respectively.
But hey, at least the minds at Microsoft Gaming have Game Pass, right? Surely they wouldn’t do anything to ruin its sole shining beacon. You would think, but as soon as October began, the company revealed a revamp of the service and a new tagline, “This is how we play.” Game Pass Ultimate is now $30 monthly, up from $20; Game Pass Standard is now Premium and costs $15; and Core has become Essential, costing $10. Is there irony in using Premium as the second-highest tier when PlayStation Plus considers it the highest? Surely not.
All tiers now have access to Xbox Cloud Gaming, which has officially left beta, and Ultimate subscribers get the best quality. That’s on top of all the other benefits – Fortnite Crew, EA Play, online multiplayer, over 75 day one titles per year (which isn’t bad considering this year’s output), and access to over 400 titles currently available. Perhaps the biggest change is that Premium won’t receive Xbox-published titles on the day of their launch. Instead, subscribers will receive access within a year. Could be in a month, two months, 364 days – roll the dice and find out.
Obviously, there’s plenty of backlash to Ultimate’s price increase and Premium’s second-tier status, especially in the wake of Xbox president Sarah Bond revealing Game Pass’s success, with $5 billion in sales from the last fiscal year alone. But the timing of all this is pretty blatant, not just because three big Xbox-published titles are out this month with Ninja Gaiden 4, Keeper, and The Outer Worlds 2, but also because Ultimate subscribers get early access to the Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 beta.
Of course, they receive the full game in November. Yet it feels like Microsoft is taking advantage of the FOMO around beta codes to push its now-more-expensive Ultimate subscriptions.
That’s not all – it recently came to light that subscribers, regardless of tier, no longer receive discounts on DLC and add-ons in the Xbox Store. It probably doesn’t make much sense for older titles like Forza Horizon, but think about the “now.” Indiana Jones and the Great Circle recently received a paid story expansion in The Order of Giants. Anyone who thinks of subscribing and enjoying the base game will now have to pay full price for the expansion. The same goes for those who might want to jump back into Starfield with its next expansion. It may be as bad as Shattered Space, but Microsoft is charging full price from everyone this time.
Naturally, this also applies to all add-ons and premium currency in Call of Duty. It’s yet another step to maximize returns on Black Ops 7, potentially because sales of last year’s title saw a significant drop due to Game Pass. Isn’t this just Microsoft trying to solve a problem that it fought tooth and nail to create?
Don’t worry, though, because it allegedly has something for everyone who feels that these pricing models aren’t worth it. And that is, according to The Verge’s Tom Warren, a free version of Xbox Cloud Gaming. With ads, naturally.
Reportedly in testing, it allows for streaming certain titles without needing Game Pass, including those that the player owns and Xbox Retro Classics. But before that, you’ll apparently need to watch two minutes of pre-roll ads, and there’s a limit of one hour per session. This is all subject to change, including the amount of “free” hours provided each month, but it will be available for PC, Xbox, web browsers, and, of course, the company’s upcoming handhelds.
Many questions come to mind when considering all this, but one of them isn’t why Microsoft is doing this if Game Pass is so profitable. It’s because of the profits that it’s going in this direction, further monetizing the heck out of a solid revenue stream. All these price hikes seemingly feed into Call of Duty in one way or another, and since it’s too late to put the genie back in the bottle with day-one Game Pass access, you can bet it’s going to try to squeeze every last bit of cash out to make up for any lost sales.
Also, is it any surprise that Ultimate is $10 more, the proposed increase to its $70 first-party triple-A titles before it backed down? I wouldn’t be surprised if it commits to the $80 price point next year, saying it’s justified with games like Fable, Gears of War: E-Day and Forza Horizon 6. And if you can’t afford it, hey, Game Pass Ultimate is only $30. Then you’ll wake up one day and suddenly it’s $40, but that’s still a better deal, right?
You would think I’m trying to make Microsoft look bad, especially since all those moves are to ensure even more profit on top of all the sales thus far. Honestly, the company itself is doing a fantastic job of that with its messaging, presenting these deals as a better value and pushing yet another soulless slogan to try and stand out. Maybe I’d be less bitter about all this if I knew all this wasn’t funding Microsoft’s larger AI push. Then again, maybe not.
At the end of the day, this isn’t about a subscription service with multiple times its value costing more now than it did before. It’s also not about criticizing a major corporation for pursuing profits – you might as well browbeat a shark when it senses blood in the water. Rather, it’s about the bigger picture – how Microsoft sacrificed first-party game sales for the sake of Game Pass, torpedoed its own console (and the previous generation) multiple times over, released shoddy products while attempting to save face in the most asinine ways, laid off employees and shuttered studios when its own management is lacking, and so on. And instead of investing in some kind of goodwill, or at the very least, trying to keep its current base satisfied in the sole area that it’s done so thus far, it wants to fleece them further.
It’s a bold strategy, and like many that Microsoft has pursued thus far, I’m not sure how well it will work out in the long term. But at this point, it’s in too deep to really do anything else but keep digging.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
