Submitted 3 weeks ago by ampersandrew@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/10/01/xbox-game-pass-ultimate-premium-essential-plans/
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 $15 tier “within a year”, but that’s even excluding Call of Duty.
As with almost all subscription services, the enshittification was inevitable.
Except this one even started shit.
Call me oldschool, but I like my games available when I want them, not held hostage behind a subscription fee.
That’s a valid opinion if you want ownership over everything else, fair.
But to blanket-label Game Pass as “shit” right from the start really isn’t fair to all those people for whom it was good value, and gave access to a lot of games they probably wouldn’t have been able to justify otherwise.
Personally it wasn’t for me, because I too don’t like subscriptions, but for some of my friends it was and I respect that.
Let’s not forget that games leave Game Pass so there’s an element of FoMO
It started off very good actually with the £1 upgrades and converting existing subs (so 3 years of Game Pass for £70!) but it’s time has come to an end.
Same.
Everytime I saw a dipshit shilling gamepass, it just reinforced my opinion of the average idiot.
Everyone who is upset now should’ve been upset sooner, but it’s better than nothing. I guess.
Not just business, this is what China is doing right now too
30$/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
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.
Yeah I agree. I never used Gamepass as I am not the target audience, but the value proposition made sense to me and I understood why some people paid for it.
This new pricing makes no sense at all, wouldn’t you rather just buy the games you want at that point? $360 a year gets you a lot of games, even accounting for a couple of AAA day one purchases every year.
I have a hard time believing there are many people willing to spend 360$ 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.
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 spring 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.
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!”
We all knew enshittification was coming, but it spooled up faster than expected.
Those billion AI GPUs won’t pay for themselves you know.
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!
Don’t suppose there’s still a cheap trick to buying 3 years of vouchers for relatively cheap and upgrading to Ultimate? That worked great in 2022, but I’m guessing they shut it down.
CDKeys is definitely not what it use to be for this stuff. Use to get a dirt cheap year of basic, convert with a month of Ultimate n good to go. Or some variation of that. I think those days are long gone now unfortunately
I just bought three years of EA play and converted it into a year of gamepass last month. Seems to be the best deal left now.
I haven’t been able to buy cheaper months since the last price hike. Cdkeys had one sale and it sold out insanely fast.
Canceled my subscription. Fuck you, Microsoft.
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 Wilds 2 before dropping service.
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
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
do they inject ads into loading screens and cut scenes?
Give it time
That’s it, this is the last Xbox console I’ll ever buy
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 idea 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.
Woo!
The morons who love renting get to pay more now!
I love watching this!
Renting has its place.
lol anyone who pays that is a fucking idiot
I don’t think the Burberry strategy is going to work for you guys.
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.
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.
You should get into emulating.
Way more better games that you wouldn’t be playing otherwise. And it’s all free.
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.
I’m so glad I use Microsoft Rewards.
Are you also aware that you can no longer use those to get Game Pass?
Are you fucking kidding? I thought I’d use up my saved points to grab a month or 2 next year. They REALLY know how to screw the fan base.
Oh I just looked, are you serious.
Gerudo@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
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.
BenReilly97@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
Quicky@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
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.
whereyaaat@lemmings.world 3 weeks ago
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!
Gerudo@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
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.