Canadians of a certain age will likely recall the Friendly Giant urging them to "look up—way up" at the beginning of each of his children's television adventures. I thought of those words today in the wake of Microsoft's announcement of an overhaul of its Game Pass program, which among other things is now a whole lot more expensive than it used to be.
In an announcement reminiscent of Phil Spencer's comments about how great things are looking at Xbox as the company laid off 9,000 people, the Xbox team said "creator participation and player engagement in Game Pass are at an all-time high." But, it continued, "we have the opportunity for Game Pass to help more players find the creators and games they love."
"We know not everyone wants the same thing in their Xbox experience, so we’re evolving Game Pass to offer more flexibility, choice, and value to all players, whether you love day one releases, discovering hidden gems, or playing across multiple devices and screens and across Xbox consoles, Xbox on PC, and Xbox Cloud."
That evolution means two things. First, renamed pricing tiers that pack a more powerful punch: Instead of Core, Standard, and Ultimate tiers, it's now Essential, Premium, and Ultimate tiers—"Ultimate" gets to stay because, I guess, it's already ultimate.
And second, well, that price hike: Game Pass Ultimate, which if you're going to get anything is probably the one you should get, took a whopping 50% jump, from $19.99 to $29.99 per month. Game Pass Premium is remaining at parity with the old Standard plan at $14.99 per month, while Essential is holding steady at the previous Core price of $9.99 per month.
And don't think you're going to escape unscathed if you're a PC-exclusive gamer: PC Game Pass went up from $11.99 per month to $16.49, an also-very-substantial increase of nearly 40%.
There are changes in specific offerings for each package—things like "in-game benefits," whatever they may be, access to games on PC and cloud as well as console, and unlimited cloud gaming, which I suppose is nice if you're into that—but broadly speaking, life will continue for lower-tier subscribers more or less as it always has.
It's that Game Pass Ultimate (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, PC Game Pass, although as a percentage that's a hell of a jump too) price increase that's hard to swallow. $30 a month is $360 a year, an amount that'll buy you a half-dozen big-budget releases at launch, close to double that number of mid-tier games, or literally years' worth of games in a Steam sale: You could, for instance, snag The Elder Scrolls Franchise bundle—Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Redguard, Battlespire, and TESO—for about $65, less than 1/5 the cost of a year of Game Pass Ultimate.
Or consider this: Microsoft made a lot of noise about Silksong, one of the biggest games of the year, being available on Game Pass Ultimate on day one. As multiple people have pointed out, you can own it on Steam for $20—or you can rent it, for one month, for $30.
Since we're on a roll, I'll point out you can play Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 for a couple months, or for as long as you like, for essentially the same amount of money.
The "What's changing with Xbox Game Pass" video on YouTube is getting hammered: Six hours after it was posted, it has 5,700 likes, and more than 15,000 dislikes.
Microsoft is absolutely correct that everyone is different, and Game Pass will undoubtedly remain a good deal for some gamers—but it's no longer the slam-dunk, if-you-game-you-should-have-this offering it used to be.
The reaction to the change is widely negative, which is no surprise; industry analyst Mat Piscatella also said a recent Circana survey found that cost was the number-one reason Game Pass subscribers ultimately decided to cancel.
$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) 2025-10-01T21:04:29.416Z
Still, this may have been inevitable. PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon said back in 2022 that "Game Pass can't stay this good a deal forever," predicting presciently that "the deal will get just a little bit worse as we continue to pay for a subscription that feels as universal as water or Netflix."
It's faced growing criticism more recently: Arkane co-founder Raphael Colantonio said Game Pass "is an unsustainable model" earlier this year, that only survives because it's "subsidized by Microsoft's 'infinite money'," while former Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shawn Layden thinks subscription services like Xbox Game Pass are a "danger" to the industry that risks turning developers into "wage slaves."
There's also the impact on retail game sales, which in most cases is where the money is actually made: Former Xbox Games Studios vice president Shannon Loftis said in September that "the majority of game adoption on GP comes at the expense of retail revenue." Game Pass may have been a worthwhile loss leader when Microsoft was a contender in the console wars, but, having been thoroughly trounced on that front, it makes a lot less sense to keep propping it up.
The only way to address that sustainability problem is to jack up the price—but jacking up the price to the point of sustainability carries a strong risk of killing the wide appeal that made Game Pass a "success" in the first place. It's a tough spot, and it may ultimately turn out that the detractors were correct: The whole subscription thing just doesn't work.
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