Xbox Game Pass Ultimate 50% increase

What do they say about death and taxes? I'm pretty sure there was no mention of Xbox Game Pass in that old phrase, but ...

Hey! If you're an Xbox fan just kicking off your day, I have a mixed bag of news for you to parse through this morning — pertaining to our old pal Xbox Game Pass.

People often call Xbox Game Pass the "best deal in gaming," and for good reason. The low-cost monthly subscription gives full access to hundreds of games and additional benefits. It's almost a no-brainer for any Xbox fan inside the ecosystem, especially in 2025. This year, Xbox Game Pass arguably saw its best content cycle in the service's history, with titles like DOOM: The Dark Ages, Oblivion Remake, Hollow Knight Silksong, Expedition 33, Blue Prince, Atomfall, and various other gems of all shapes and sizes hit the service day one.

It's so good that detractors often say it's too good, to the point where Xbox Game Pass has been repeatedly questioned as a viable business model. From retail sales cannibalization and debates over its overall impact on the game industry, devs using the service seem to love it — but questions about how it might be impacting Microsoft's studios, whose games go in there day one, refuse to abate.

For those who were "concerned" it was too cheap to replace retail sales, perhaps this new price tier will be more palatable for them — although I suspect a mixed reaction from current Ultimate subscribers, despite a range of new benefits. Be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments.

The good news, and then the bad news

Xbox Game Pass is being restructured all up, with some good benefits, with (some) quite hefty price changes.

Game Pass Core and Game Pass Standard are now Game Pass Essential and Game Pass Premium, and Xbox Cloud Gaming is finally shedding its beta tag as it joins all existing tiers (except PC Game Pass).

Both of these main tiers will get a ton of new benefits. Game Pass Core's (now Essential's) library is being doubled in size to over 50 games, and will now include PC and cloud games on top. On that, it will now include unlimited access to Xbox Cloud Gaming, albeit subject to queues. How long these queues will be remain wholly to be seen. The price will not change, but getting access to Xbox Cloud Gaming and additional games is pretty sweet.

Game Pass Standard is now Game Pass Premium as mentioned. Game Pass Premium is being expanded to include PC and cloud games too, and will gain over 40 new back catalogue games as of today, including Forza Horizon 5, Minecraft, Hogwarts Legacy, Frostpunk 2, and Diablo IV. It will also get access to Xbox Cloud Gaming, complete with shorter queues. Microsoft guarantees that all Xbox Games Studios titles (excluding Call of Duty ...) will hit the service within a year of launch. The price will also not change. Sweet.

PC Game Pass will get a price increase from $11.99 per month to $16.49, but will now include Ubisoft+ Classics, adding an additional 40 games to the service. It will retain day one access to all Xbox Studios titles on PC, including Call of Duty. It won't get access to cloud gaming, though, sadly.

Finally, the big kicker. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is going up from $19.99 to $29.99 per month, a whopping 50% increase. Microsoft is now promising over 75 day one games per year into the service, on the calibre of titles like Expedition 33 and DOOM: The Dark Ages, as well as Call of Duty. In addition, Ultimate gets Ubisoft+ Classics library, featuring over 40 additional titles, as well as the Fortnite Crew subscription at no additional cost, for free V-bucks and the like. Ultimate also gets Xbox Cloud Gaming's new 1440p resolution and boosted bitrate, with maximum queue priority.

On top of this, Microsoft is also changing how Microsoft Rewards interacts with Xbox Game Pass. Some noticed that direct purchasing of Xbox Game Pass has been removed from the Microsoft Rewards program. Getting Xbox credit is now tied directly to what tier of Xbox Game Pass you're currently in, with Ultimate getting the biggest boost and Essential getting the lowest. There's also an annual cap on how much you can earn towards Xbox credit, supposedly because Microsoft decided it was too generous previously.

New games joining Xbox Game Pass today

There's also a ton of new games joining Xbox Game Pass tiers today, with many of them being from the Ubisoft+ Classics addition, although there are some sneaky non-Ubisoft additions too, like Hogwarts Legacy.

New games in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (October 1, 2025):

New games in Xbox Game Pass Premium (also in Ultimate):

New games in Xbox Game Pass Essential (also in Ultimate and Premium):

A nice boost for the lower tiers, but a hard pill for Ultimate

The restructuring of Xbox Game Pass doubtlessly revolves around Microsoft's move to OEM Xbox console hardware. Things like the Xbox Ally, and another OEM "Xbox PC" I've been researching for 2026 don't really fit well into the old structure unless you're already all the way on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Now, Xbox users who grab an Xbox Ally also get some PC games thrown in, as well as cloud gaming.

Microsoft has spread the PC-oriented benefits of Xbox Game Pass to the lower tiers, shedding the Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) tag and boosting resolution on the high end. Blanket cloud gaming access, of course, won't be cheap to run — all that server juice costs money, so it's nice to see it arrive at no additional cost.

But, the massive price increase of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is hard to overlook. It's difficult to see this as anything other than an attempt to mitigate the service's impact on Call of Duty. It's probably no coincidence that these changes are going in right ahead of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7's launch in November. Only Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will retain access to the latest Call of Duty titles, and Game Pass already got a price bump previously when Call of Duty entered the service prior.

For those who aren't interested in Call of Duty or Fortnite Crew, it now feels a bit like there isn't a particularly great tier available for them. Being able to tailor packages based on playstyle would be ideal, but the system is already complex enough. There's still no sign of a Game Pass Family Plan of sorts, or even an "add additional user" feature like Netflix has. It's hard to know how bad the queues for Xbox Cloud Gaming access will be too for lower tiers once this goes live, which begs the question if it'll even be worth it.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate still has utterly undeniable value, but really only if you're actually using all of the features. With conversations revolving heavily around there being frankly "too much to actually play," it makes me wonder if these changes have been made to actually grow the service in any meaningful way — or are simply designed to mitigate the damage either to, or from Call of Duty entering the service. Call of Duty is a monstrously successful game, but also monstrously expensive to make. The Xbox Game Pass sales cannibalization was probably vacuuming up all the revenue from the service, and it was probably only going to get worse as more people became aware of the option to skip the $70 price point.

If that was true, you'd think the move would be to simply remove Call of Duty from Xbox Game Pass ... but Microsoft used adding Call of Duty to Xbox Game Pass as a way to justify its Activision-Blizzard acquisition to regulators. Maintaining the variety that makes Xbox Game Pass Ultimate popular was probably becoming difficult with Call of Duty vacuuming up all the fees, as Microsoft charges Xbox Game Pass a "tax" back to game studios for projected cannibalized retail sales.

Xbox Game Pass has roughly 35 million subscribers as of writing, but Microsoft hasn't shared any official milestones for quite some time. It remains to be seen if these changes will help the service grow, or actually hurt it.

What do you think? Vote in our poll, and drop a comment.

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