Microsoft has dropped the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate from $29.99 per month to $22.99 per month, while PC Game Pass is being reduced from $16.49 per month to $13.99 per month. Both changes are effective immediately. Meanwhile, new Call of Duty games will no longer be included as day-one releases in either service, and instead will be added “during the following holiday season (about a year later),” according to Microsoft. Call of Duty games that are already part of any tier of Game Pass are unaffected by this change.
“Our players cover a wide breadth of geographies, preferences, and tastes, so while there isn’t a single model that’s best for everyone, this change responds to a lot of feedback we’ve gotten so far,” Microsoft said in a statement. ”We’ll continue to listen and learn.”
This move follows last week’s leaked memo from new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma, in which she told the Xbox team, “Game Pass has become too expensive for players, so we need a better value equation,” as well as a subsequent report that Sharma and the Xbox leadership team were considering removing Call of Duty from day-one availability on Game Pass.
Sharma, named to her post following longtime Xbox boss Phil Spencer’s retirement in February, isn’t wasting time trying to repair Xbox’s trust with the gaming community following last year’s eye-watering 50% price increase of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Now, even if you purchase this year’s inevitable new Call of Duty – presuming it stays at $69.99 – you’ll still come out ahead of where the price has been for the past six months while subscribing to Game Pass Ultimate. Yesterday, Microsoft announced the second wave of games coming to Xbox Game Pass in April.
If you’d like to dig deeper into this news, I wrote an opinion piece on why I think this price cut is a key first step in fixing Xbox’s problems.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our semi-retired interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
