Microsoft cut the price of Game Pass. Now it should reinvent the Xbox

Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass was supposed to be the ray of light for gamers looking for value: an all-you-can-eat buffet of triple-A and indie titles, including unlimited streaming, for one low monthly price. Then the “low” part of this equation started to disappear, culminating in a staggering 50% price increase by October 2025.

Reversing course – sort of – a few months later, as Microsoft did yesterday, is the first positive step for Xbox gaming in a long time. And I have an idea for the next one.

How Microsoft got here

A little history, for context. Xbox Game Pass launched in beta in 2017 and more broadly in 2019, offering access to tons of Xbox and PC games in addition to Xbox Live Gold (Xbox’s paid online multiplayer pass) for $15 per month. At the same time, the “Xbox Game Pass for PC” cost only $10 per month, which at that time contained “over 100 PC games.” Microsoft’s offerings would expand significantly and very quickly, as the company doubled down on Game Pass as the core of its gaming platform offering.

It’s also one of the reasons it’s spent about a hundred billion dollars acquiring developers and building a streaming backend, trying to make sure they can say “This is an Xbox” to everything from low-power laptops to phones to cars. Game Pass is, to use a technical industry term, a big fucking deal for Microsoft: it is nothing less than the cornerstone of the company’s gaming strategy for this decade.

Microsoft

But even Microsoft’s pockets are not bottomless. The purchase of mega studios like Activision-Blizzard and Bethesda will show up in the profit and loss report, and it was spending up to $50 million each on exclusives on the Game Pass service. The Ultimate tier increased to $17 in 2023, then $20 in 2024… but was steadily adding new and classic games to justify it. The price increased by 50% in October 2025, up to $30 per month for the full service, at the same time that gaming hardware and the Xbox itself became less affordable. Suddenly, the best gaming offer was much less attractive.

Meanwhile, the Xbox console was (and is) unambiguously getting its big green ass kicked by the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. Perhaps more importantly, Microsoft’s position as the de facto home of PC gaming is very much in question. Steam is an unstoppable juggernaut pretending to be a games store, and with the Steam Deck and Linux-based SteamOS spreading to other handhelds, and soon (maybe) the very console Steam Machine, Microsoft is feeling the heat. Something had to give.

That something was someone: Phil Spencer, CEO of Xbox/Microsoft Games. A decades-long veteran of the company and industry, he retired with at least some dignity in February. Spencer was a constant and attractive presence for Microsoft, and many gamers (and gaming journalists) were sad to see him go. They were even less enthusiastic about her replacement, Asha Sharma, whose most notable experience was with Microsoft’s CoreAI product.

Players were already wary of the generative “AI” infecting various aspects of the hobby, and how it infiltrated and enshittified Windows 11, were not happy. And I’d be lying by omission if I didn’t point out an undercurrent of pervasive sexism in the gaming world. A change was certainly needed, but Sharma faced an uphill battle in every sense of the word.

Xbox Game Pass is (a little) cheaper

His opening move was smart, at least from a PR perspective. In a leaked memo, Sharma told the Xbox team that Game Pass had become too expensive after it was raised to $30 five months before its promotion. She has now confirmed this claim. As of yesterday, the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate has dropped to $22.99. This is still an increase from the $20 price seen earlier in 2025, but it is more manageable. The PC-only plan, which doesn’t include streaming, costs $14 per month, and the very lite version (which includes a small portion of streaming games) can be tried for $10 per month.

Microsoft

A cheaper Game Pass is a big deal. The PCWorld team, including yours truly, recommended the streaming element as an inexpensive way to get a gaming fix without investing in expensive hardware. And Mark Hachman made such a suggestion in February. Lowering the price – even if it doesn’t return to where it was before – is an unambiguous improvement. With a big downside: Call of duty.

Perhaps the most hyped game series in the world, aside from Grand Theft Auto, COD is one of the jewels in Microsoft’s gaming crown after the Activision-Blizzard acquisition. And getting “free” day one access to annual COD games has been a big part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate’s appeal in recent years. Now it’s going away. New COD games won’t be part of Game Pass, but you’ll still have access to the (huge!) existing library, and games will appear on the service after a year.

I would have liked to see the price go back down to $20 per month, perhaps removing some of the unnecessary stuff that was added to Game Pass, like Fortnite Crew and EA Play. But as someone who hasn’t played any COD games since the original Modern warfare in 2007, I don’t feel the pain of his absence. More importantly, COD is a reliable cash cow for Activision and Microsoft: each new entry sells millions every year, no matter what. So the Game Pass subscribers that Microsoft loses by pulling out that $70 per year carrot will most likely be recouped through a bunch of direct sales, not to mention continued microtransactions within each game.

It’s money that Xbox and Microsoft desperately need, while also providing broader appeal to Game Pass. Players like me, more interested in the niche and cheaper titles the pass provides access to, get a win here…but again, not as much of a win as a $20 price tag would have been. I’d much rather these less tangible extras be optional add-ons, a protein additive to your gaming smoothie rather than a non-negotiable part of the package.

My idea: Xbox Pass Edition

What’s next, with Xbox console prices still way too high, with the Surface and… well, pretty much everything else? I think Microsoft needs to read the room. People are worried about prices and struggling to make ends meet. How about this: Subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for a year and get a free streaming box. Something like the Chromecast that Google offered for free with YouTube TV.

The $50 Fire TV Stick 4K Plus works with Game Pass; offer a discounted bundle that includes one and one Xbox controller. Or, since Amazon probably won’t play ball because it’s already running a promotion for its Luna gaming service, just partner with an OEM for a cheap Xbox-branded Android device that does the same thing. Give people a way to play tons of games, on a TV, without spending [checks notes, holy crap] four hundred dollars on the cheapest Xbox Series S.

Microsoft/Amazon

Call it “Xbox Pass Edition” or something. Game Pass is still a great service – hell, it includes two of my most played games from last year, Hades II And Absolute, with the absolute hit Song of the Hollow Knight’s Silk. Call it 500 games in a box (while making it clear that it’s a subscription service) and get that intro price as low as possible. It will sell like hot cakes… or, at the very least, will sell much better than a “budget” console at $400.

Yes, I realize I’m basically suggesting Google Stadia 2.0. But the Xbox brand is much better positioned to do this, and Game Pass makes a lot more sense than Stadia, since the latter required players to purchase full titles on a service, rather than a Netflix-style subscription with unlimited access. I think it could work. Hell, in 2026 I think this might be the best value in gaming again.