If you want to play Xbox Game Pass games like The Outer Worlds 2 or Black Ops 7 on day one, you're going to have to pay a full $30 a month for Ultimate

Microsoft has just revamped the tiers of Xbox Game Pass, and while there are some new features among the various levels of the subscription, it's mostly bad news out here. Ultimate is getting dramatically more expensive, and it remains the only way to get access to the primary benefit of Game Pass: day one access to brand-new games.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate – or, as I prefer to call it, the only tier of Game Pass that really matters – is now $30 a month, up from its previously monthly fee of $20. This is still the only way the subscription provides day one access to major games like The Outer Worlds 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

Xbox is trying to sweeten the Ultimate pot by including access to Fortnite Crew, a $12 per month subscription that gets you access to the battle pass and 1,000 monthly V-bucks in the popular battle royale game. It also now includes the Ubisoft Plus Classics catalog, which will get you games like the beloved Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag and last year's excellent Metroidvania Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. But if you don't play Fortnite and have had your fill of Ubisoft games, that's a pretty empty upgrade.

Xbox Game Pass Standard remains $15 per month, but it has been renamed Premium and now includes PC games, including classics such as Diablo and Fallout. New first-party games will be added to Premium "within a year of their launch," the announcement explains, but this promise notably "excludes Call of Duty titles."

Xbox Game Pass Core is now called Essential, and is still priced at $10 a month. This tier also now includes some PC games, but otherwise, this tier is still mostly here just to get you access to online multiplayer.

Microsoft presents the price hike on Game Pass Ultimate as "reflecting the expanded catalog, new partner benefits, and upgraded cloud gaming experience," but it reads a lot more like the reverse – that those benefits are coming in an effort to justify the massive price hike. According to a survey shared by game industry analyst Mat Piscatella, the cost of Xbox Game Pass is the top reason former members dropped their subscription, and the new look of these tiers sure doesn't appear too attractive to me.

$30 a month for Game Pass Ultimate is a HEFTY price jump. According to Circana's Q3 2025 Future of Video Games Custom Survey, the top reasons cited by those in the US who have unsubscribed from Game Pass were:

— @matpiscatella.bsky.social (@matpiscatella.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-01T15:39:40.257Z

Xbox president says Game Pass is profitable and good for creators, despite alleged division over the subscription model.