Some Xbox fans have decided to put their foot down following the recently implemented changes to Xbox Game Pass, and are cancelling their subscriptions in droves.
Now I’m not a finance journalist, but you don’t need a business studies degree to understand that a lot of folks are struggling to make ends meet at the moment. So, naturally, in a time of worldwide economic instability, Microsoft has decided that the best course of action was to… increase the price of all their consoles and Xbox Game Pass tiers.
This is obviously slightly old news, as the price increases were announced on the Xbox Wire blog back at the start of October. However, now that we’re at the end of the month, the Xbox Game Pass price subscriptions are actually about to go into effect. Although the price increase was immediate for non-subscribers (in some regions), current subscribers are only going to start paying extra for the service at the start of November (once their subscriptions renew).
Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in a wave of cancellations. If the popularity of this post and the comments over on the r/XboxGamePass subreddit are anything to go by, Microsoft might be looking at a much, much lower sub count than they likely assumed.
“Today marks the last day of my pass as well. I share your pain”, commented user YourStudyBuddy.
“I’ve chosen not to go with any passes for now and to just play local games for the near future while I mourn these ludicrous decisions by Microsoft as of late.”
“Def not worth it anymore for me. I could see subscribing for a month and cancel it to try a bunch of games for 30 days but not stay subscribed annually like before”, replied user dang3r_muffin.
“Even with the cheaper 3 month cards online this has made me realize how few games I actually play nowadays.”
“With Steam/Epic sales, free games around the place, the big games I want to play not coming to Game Pass day one anyway, I haven’t missed it having been unsubbed for months”, commented user CutMeLoose79.
“I’ll get one or two months a year at most when some of their first party games have built up. Means they make about $30 a year from me instead of selling me full price games. Too bad for them.”
Wow, who could have seen this one coming, huh? Especially considering that thousands of users were literally unable to cancel their subscriptions at the start of the month, as the influx of people attempting to do so caused the cancellation webpage to crash.
This honestly might be the worst month in Xbox history, potentially even worse than the Xbox One E3 announcement debacle, because Microsoft are doing everything in their power to generate as much negative PR as possible right now.
Oooh, but hey, a new Halo game! Shhh, just forget about all the silly stuff our executives keep doing and saying and look at how shiny Halo: Campaign Evolved is.
