Following its latest Xbox Game Pass price jump, Microsoft immediately tries to justify the decision with more day one releases and increased "value"

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Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is now 50% more expensive, and people are displeased

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
(Image credit: Activision)

In case you were unaware, Microsoft has managed to get itself in hot water by raising the cost of Game Pass Ultimate from $19.99 to $29.99. That's a substantial increase, if you hadn't noticed, and both existing subscribers and the wider community are displeased, but the company has now tried to justify the decision.

The price hike comes as part of a service rejig, refreshing the tiers to offer more to each and renaming the lower two. But consternation remains, because Ultimate is easily the most appealing of the three options, as it allows day-one access to major upcoming games such as Call of Duty Black Ops 7 and The Outer Worlds 2.

A close up of a man holding a gun during the reveal for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

(Image credit: Activision)

He touts the sheer amount of first day releases now built into Ultimate, more than have ever been on the calendar before. "We're also now giving access to more than 75 day one releases each year," Blackwell adds. "That's a 50% increase over the day one titles we provided last year."

That's all well and good, but it's still something already offered as part of the highest-priced tier on the platform. Other subscriptions are folded into Ultimate now as well: Fortnite Crew and Ubisoft Plus Classics, which Blackwell contends bring "about $28 a month in value."

Convenient if you were already a user of those services, but if you aren't and have no interest, they're meaningless. $30 makes it that much harder to justify Ultimate month-to-month. On a more positive note, both Game Pass Standard and Game Pass Essential, still $15 and $10 per-month, respectively, now include PC games.

They've become slightly more appealing in the maelstrom. We'll see how this shakes out with overall numbers for Game Pass, but it's not looking good.

Microsoft reportedly doesn't include lost first-party game sales when calculating Xbox Game Pass profits, but the subscription service is apparently earning money regardless

Anthony McGlynn
Anthony McGlynn
Contributing Writer

Anthony is an Irish entertainment and games journalist, now based in Glasgow. He previously served as Senior Anime Writer at Dexerto and News Editor at The Digital Fix, on top of providing work for Variety, IGN, Den of Geek, PC Gamer, and many more. Besides Studio Ghibli, horror movies, and The Muppets, he enjoys action-RPGs, heavy metal, and pro-wrestling. He interviewed Animal once, not that he won’t stop going on about it or anything.

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