They’re trying to soften the blow by adding new features to each tier, but it’s still just to disguise a price hike. More games are coming to the $15 tier, but it still won’t be day and date releases. First party games come to the $15 tier “within a year”, but that’s even excluding Call of Duty.
More than a 100% price hike in my country. Just downgraded from ultimate to premium because my kid has an Xbox and it is still cheaper than buying the games individually.
But, otherwise I would have cancelled the plan.
Those billion AI GPUs won’t pay for themselves you know.
At one time XBOX fanbase were so desperate to play games like Halo and Gears of War that they were wrapping their dead XBOX 360 in a towel and putting it in an oven to resurrect it. That sounds so insane but it actually happened. Fast forward to now, Microsoft has raised hardware prices twice since May and now raising price of their game pass by 50%. Clearly they’re no longer interested in increasing XBOX market share or even retaining it. They’ve pivoted their strategy to milk their current XBOX fans as much money as they can until the brand is completely dead.
We all knew enshittification was coming, but it spooled up faster than expected.
Not just business, the same dynamic is working for China right now too
I used to be a huge advocate for Game Pass. I’ve played so many games I never would have without, and have saved so much from buying games and not liking them.
30 a month is insane. It now outpaces my buying rate and I can’t justify it. The lower tiers just don’t do it for me. They finally killed an Xbox Live customer since the 360.
I’m exactly the same. Xbox gamer since the OG, and big fan of GamePass until recently. There’s no way I’m paying that much. Mine expires this month, and that’ll be that.
Same here. This year I switched from using the Xbox Live to Game Pass upgrade thing to have it all the time, to paying full price for Game Pass only during the months when I’m actively using it.
The more expensive they make it, the less I’ll pay.
It was always a scam.
Hopefully you learned your lesson and won’t go to bat for corporations trying to get you to rent access to something you could be getting for free.
Use your brain before your wallet, always!
Jesus, did all you people pissing on fans of Game Pass stand outside of Blockbbuster back in the day?
I paid for a service KNOWING I was renting. KNOWING the service would eventually enshitify. KNOWING it was unsustainable at past prices. I rode the wave as long as it made sense, the ride is now over. It’s just like the Movie Pass deal a few years ago, milk it for all its worth while you can.
I don’t think the comment above is talking about GamePass specifically. They’re talking about the “I’ve been an Xbox customer since…” stuff. That kind of corporate loyalty is a scam. You never should buy a product because you owned the previous one. Do what’s best for you when it’s best for you. Don’t give them any loyalty. Make them earn your purchase.
Even if that was the intention, I used the platform while it worked for me, and I saw value. The minute I didn’t see the value, I left the platform. No tech company (and most companies) has had my loyalty for years. The minute they do something I don’t agree with, I’m out.
This was always the plan and it will absolutely get worse. corporations only care about “line go up” they have never and will never give a fuck about the “customer”.
The plan was to become the Netflix of video games, which they’re about 85-90% short of, so a price increase isn’t going to help that, and they know it.
Steam fall sale is happening now. Just picked up a ton of good games for less than 30 :)
Bonus: if you have multiple gamers in your household, Steam family sharing can really shine compared to having multiple Gamepass subscriptions.
Still paying for things you could be getting for free.
I don’t mind paying for good games especially from indie studios. I wanna support that creativity. Although TBF I do usually wishlist them and buy them on sale. Just got some good stuff in the steam autumn sale for less than £10
Well I’m glad I’m already not paying them for this anymore, saves me having to cancel my subscription now.
30$/month is hilarious. We all knew they were going to increase the price to justify how much microsoft is spending but at that point you might as well buy your games. I guess it would make sense if you’re playing every day one release and are already subscribed to other things that are now included such as fortnite, ubisoft+…
but 99.9% of gamers are not that obsessed. I have a hard time believing there are many people willing to spend 360$ to play games that will disappear as soon as you stop playing. and I have a hard time believing most standard game pass subscribers will stay subscribed now that recently released games aren’t included. That was the only reason I bothered subbing for a month every year or so
Even if you play every day one release, there’s hardly one of those per month. The math used to work out, for a long time, that one month of Game Pass was about 1/4 of the cost of a full priced new release, so going for a subscription made some kind of sense for a certain kind of consumer. This is a hard sell.
I have a hard time believing there are many people willing to spend 360$ to play games that will disappear as soon as you stop playing.
I hardly spend $100 on games a year. Subscribing to Game Pass means I’m overspending by April, and for games I don’t even own. Insane proposition.
I guess it would make sense if
Why do you people keep doing this?
It doesn’t make sense. Anyone who continues to pay for this is an even bigger idiot than the people who paid for it prior.
I barely even buy 5 games a year, and often not at full price. And usually the games I want aren’t even on GamePass anyways.
$360/year is crazy. Only a good deal if you’re buying more than 6 full price games a year and plan to 100% beat them and never play again before they disappear from the catalog.
Keep in mind, this corporation has data saying people are willing to subscribe to office software when there are legally free alternatives.
All the morons subscribing to these scams are data points for analysts to point to and say “See? Look at how stupid these people are! There’s no reason we shouldn’t be charging them more because they love to pay it!”
Is this for the PC only version too? I can’t tell through all the marketing speak.
Microsoft is also increasing the price of its PC Game Pass subscription today, moving from $11.99 a month to $16.49 monthly — a nearly 40 percent increase. Microsoft isn’t trying to justify this increase with any added extras for PC players, though.
“The only change happening for PC Game Pass subscribers is that they won’t be getting Ubisoft Plus Classics, but they’ll be getting about 50 additional Ubisoft titles across PC Game Pass,” Blackwell says. “It will continue to get day one titles.”
I would reckon most are still saving money but we will know it is going to keep going up in price.
I would be subscribed but you can’t use it on steam deck.
Thank you!
FYI - as of this posting sites like cdkeys (now loaded) have some og pricing but it’s quickly rising. Buy em if you want to get through games like Outer Worlds 2 before dropping service.
Sigh
Don’t buy them. Torrent them.
Can we stop being stupid pawns?
Not all games are cracked? I’m still waiting on Borderlands 4
Ohhh you really got my hopes up there. I was like “There’s an Outer Wilds 2!?” all excited
But no. There’s only an Outer Worlds 2, sadly :(
Woops… Now THAT would be a reason for me to keep Game Pass
You edited it! Put it back lol, doesn’t make sense to change the context like that :)
We used to really enjoy game pass as a family. I think the best part is discovering games that we wouldn’t have played otherwise. But at some point we stopped using it, so we cancelled. We’ve gotten 1 or 2 months free or cheap a couple of times now, but I ended up mainly playing one game… Although I suppose I did discover that I liked Avowed more than Expedition 33 😳. If I’d had to buy them, I would have only bought Expedition 33.
So I think we’ll keep going like this… Once a year or so use a cheap trial to get a month and try a lot of games, and use steam sales the rest of the year, and every now and then buy a full price game we really want.
You should get into emulating.
Way more better games that you wouldn’t be playing otherwise. And it’s all free.
Sounds like how a lot of us use streaming television these days, too. The price hikes change the dynamic, for sure. And I also liked Avowed more than Expedition 33.
Woo!
The morons who love renting get to pay more now!
I love watching this!
Renting has its place.
