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.
Immediately following this announcement, Dustin Blackwell, director of gaming and platform relations at Microsoft, has defended the choice to The Verge. "What's new for everyone across all three Xbox Game Pass plans is bigger game libraries, including PC games across each of the plans. There is also unlimited cloud gaming, which is new to Essential and Premium subscribers," he explains.
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.
