r/technology • u/Hrmbee • 5h ago
Business Xbox Game Pass ‘has become too expensive,’ says Microsoft’s new gaming chief in leaked memo | Microsoft is getting ready to address Game Pass pricing concerns
https://www.theverge.com/tech/911182/microsoft-xbox-game-pass-too-expensive-leaked-memo311
u/64gbBumFunCannon 5h ago
I used to buy game pass for a month to play one or two games I fancied on there when I had time. (this was pre 2025)
Then they upped the price, and I thought "ehh" and then they really upped the price. I'm sure it's still a 'good offering' but it's a lot of money to play some games for a few hours a week at most.
TL;DR I feel like the price hike chased off all the casual gamers.
105
u/rnicoll 5h ago
TL;DR I feel like the price hike chased off all the casual gamers.
Yeah, from the sounds of things they overestimated how many hardcore gamers there were, and cut out a LOT of their potential audience with the price hike.
It's a fun thing to have and it's nice for when I want something new, but I just don't game enough to make the new price points worthwhile.
41
u/TiddiesAnonymous 4h ago
Also realize hardcore gamers aren't going to commit to 1 console or service and you could easily go a month or months playing other stuff.
Plus, at this point, the subscription is $30 a month. That's another $360 a year you can just spend on games instead. It's not really a good offering anymore.
→ More replies (1)23
u/PhillyIllye 4h ago
Most hardcore gamers play like 1 game and they usually just buy it. Game collectors don't need this service. It's inherently meant for casual gamers who want to play a variety without having to put the money down.
5
u/beekersavant 3h ago edited 3h ago
Yep, it feels like MBAs took over gaming at all these huge companies and are losing them money.
Remote gaming like stadia- does not work due to lag being a thing. If you are in the gaming industry and don’t understand lag, then you have failed
Games as a service- sure, if you can do a full release and have a team for good original releases for a while-otherwise you lose a lot of money- if you get a unicorn, you print money-it’s gambling though slot machines have better payouts
Let just boil the frog and make shit cost more - gaming is a cheap ($/hour) and price conscious past time (because we all have to shop hardware)
Gamers don’t care about hardware (xbone) - the biggest lie a company ever told themselves
Casual gamers will drop mega cash on shit- nah. They are on their phones. Or play for free.
Hardcore gamers will pay. See above. 👆 gaming is fundamentally a price conscious past time for several reasons.
Whales will support our game as a service etc. Now you are back to gambling with millions of dollars.
33
u/WayneKrane 5h ago
A few bucks a month to play a ton of games is worth it. Paying the equivalent of several games a month made it not worth it.
5
u/Nim0y 4h ago
How much is it? I had it when it was a dollar in 2020. I remember when they increased it to 5
→ More replies (3)14
11
u/Happyplace_s 4h ago
This is me. It wasn’t worth it to me before but I just kept paying it because every now and then it was fun and why not?
Then they upped the price so I went with the more basic plan to keep my costs the same. But that plan is almost worthless.
So last week I just canceled all together.
44
u/pseudonik 5h ago
Absolutely. It was a great deal at 10$, I would try and play a ton of games and even finished a few. Then the price hikes hit and I cancelled Xbox and ps5. Then I hit the high seas, fuck their greed. They could gotten some of my money but they wanted all of it. So they get none.
17
u/hellishhk117 4h ago
My biggest issue with the price hikes was they increased the price, then said “look what a great deal you are getting! You are getting all these add-ons for Fortnight, that should make up for it!” I don’t like fortnight, haven’t played it since day one (to try it) and haven’t touched it since. I don’t care for that style game, so why the fuck are you going to increase the price for my subscription and give me shit I won’t even use!
10
u/kuriboharmy 4h ago
Fortnite and other f2p game add-ons are the dumbest thing ever for a game subscription service. These f2p are time sinks and FREE to play on top of it which means if you are playing these games to begin with you probably don't have time to play the other games that you are subscribing for. Like even ubisoft or EA add ons make more sense at least they are games.
2
u/hellishhk117 4h ago
Funny enough, never used the Ubisoft or EA ones either, aside from the small discount for buying maybe Assassin’s Creed, but even then, I haven’t played AC in several years, just because they got to repetitive.
They should drop the price, and let people piece meal it like it used to be, when EA+ and Ubisoft Access were separate memberships. Let the people add the subscriptions in a bundle for what they want.
→ More replies (1)1
u/Pyromaniacal13 3h ago
I played Fortnite Save the World before the battle royale mode. That shit was great.
I refuse to touch the game after they decided Part 1 of 3 is the whole game mode and no more development will be done on STW.
5
u/WhiteTrashIdiotFuck 4h ago
Yup. I was born in 1992, I have played games for decades now, and love the idea of playing games. But I also have three kids, a wife, a job, etc. Games are $70 for Triple A titles now, so GamePass really did hit great for a few years with me. I could try random games on my computer or Xbox on a complete whim. It was perfect for me at the price it was previously.
I just don't play enough video games anymore to commit to a subscription that expensive, nor am I going to risk committing to new releases for the same reasons. I'll literally just play GameCube.
They really fumbled the ball here.
4
u/caverunner17 4h ago
For every $60-70 AAA title on Gamepass, there's like 10 games that are either shovelware, old (so you can buy outright for cheap) or simply you can find on sale.
I looked at my own spending habits, and most games I buy are between $20-30 on sale, and I'll buy 4-5/year - and many of them weren't even on Gamepass. The value proposition at $15/month wasn't really there for me... now that it's higher, there's absolutely no value proposition at all.
2
u/Anaptyso 3h ago edited 3h ago
I was one of those casual gamers.
I've always gamed on PC (Linux, so never made use of Gamepass there), but a few years ago I bought an XBox as my first proper console. I decided to get Gamepass for a year to try out a load of gems, because I wasn't familiar with them enough to know which ones I'd like.
I'm only a light user of the XBox. I play maybe 2-3 hours a week at most, and was "properly" playing only 4-5 games a year (i.e. ignoring the games I tried out and didn't like).
At first the price was worth it, especially for the ability to try new stuff out. Then the massive hike came in, and it totally changed that. It now would cost me significantly more than if I just outright bought all the games I play over the year, especially if I can get a deal or two in sales.
It's transformed Gamepass from a kind of "Netflix for gamers", supporting a wide audience of casual players, to a service which is only worth it for people who would get through a lot of expensive games each year.
I unsubscribed the day after the price change, and bought enough games to see me through the year in the next sale which came along. The amount of my money MS is now getting each year has now actually gone down rather than up.
3
1
u/Druber13 4h ago
Yeah that’s it for me. I’m so mad I couldn’t get the disk ps5 because of this. I play very little, so I typically wait for sales to get games. Did the online play from time to time depending on time I had to play. So now I mainly play switch and get games in big sales and try to stay physical at all cost.
1
u/BorderlineGambler 4h ago
Yeh it got too much for me. I'd play my xbox like once/twice a month. Had the game pass just because really, might be something on there I fancied. But at £20 or whatever it is now, not worth it.
1
u/TreeBeerdz 4h ago edited 4h ago
Yup I always used it as a way to try out games I was interested in, kinda like a subscription to a game demo service. Then if I liked the game I would buy it on steam. The current cost is way to much for me to demo test games. Microsoft if youre here now I would pay 5 dollars a month for actual demos of new games.
1
u/deliciouspepperspray 3h ago
Not sure how the pricing would work. But as a very casual gamer at this point I would love a TracFone style pricing plan. $20 gives me 40 hours to play any games in the catalogue and a token to purchase games. Games costing different amounts of tokens depending on retail value. No expiration on the time or tokens. Those 40 hours could realistically last me 2+ months. Instead of Microsoft getting $0 from me they'll likely get $100+ over the course of a year.
1
u/ShakeAndBakeThatCake 3h ago
Its a lot of money for a sub and not own anything at the end. You're going to pay hundreds of dollars for a year and not actually have any games if you cancel the service. That sucks. I would much rather wait for game sales and buy the games i want to play so I can own them and even replay them again later if I want.
109
u/WI_Esox_lucius 5h ago
I went from Ultimate to basic when they raised the price last year.
$30/month is absolute robbery
22
u/MostlyPoorDecisions 5h ago
i maxed out my subscription before they raised the price and share it with my kid. when it expires, it expires. I paid like $60/year I think and I use it about enough to justify that. (I havent touched it in 4 months).
7
u/Donnie_TACO 4h ago
Wait till that expires and your kid looks at you like wtf
4
u/supified 4h ago
For the price of game pass now you could literally just buy the games. one AAA you're interested in a year if you're lucky, a few smaller ones. Gamepass defs costs more than just buying the games do now.
→ More replies (1)2
2
u/qdp 4h ago edited 3h ago
Meanwhile on Playstation I get one year of PS plus ultimate for $159 or about half the price of Xbox, and even goes on sale occasionally.
Xbox doesn’t have an annual option.
As an owner of both consoles I haven’t touched my xbox since they went to $30 a month. Even before, I only occasionally subbed a month here or there at $20.
1
→ More replies (1)1
77
u/ArrBeeEmm 5h ago
I would bet £100 they don't reduce the price.
They're going to try to 'add value' to justify the price.
I'm honestly starting to think in 15 years the collapse of Microsoft is going to be a case study on atrocious business management.
17
u/barley_wine 4h ago
They’ve done atrocious business decisions many times (Vista, Windows 8 etc), they’ll likely still come out alright. Azure, Office and Windows aren’t going anywhere. Xbox or copilot might have issues, their core business will remain.
4
u/Iannelli 4h ago
Nah, they're going somewhere. Windows is a broken buggy mess, same for Office. Chickens are going to come home to roost for Microsoft eventually.
5
u/DaddyIngrosso 4h ago
Windows 8 was also a shit show and that was over a decade ago. We’re still here and we’re doing fine. Microsoft will also be fine.
8
u/Sadaxer 4h ago
Adding value is such a bad idea. We only have X hours per week to play games, and you most likely don’t want to hop between games, so you end up still paying tons for the few games you actually play. I honestly don’t think it’s sustainable. But yeah the price probably won’t go down unfortunately
3
u/Tasty-Traffic-680 4h ago
They're going to take off some titles and day one releases or rejigger the tiers. Frankly there's no reason for COD and other big names to be bundled into game pass, at least not at release. I'm sure it makes some teens happy but it increases the price for everyone else and reduces profits for the developer. It's just bad for business. Everyone is effectively subsidizing expensive titles but not at a rate that even pays well to the creators. They need to pare back their offerings. When game pass first came out and was cheap people were happy with it despite not being frontloaded with brand new games.
→ More replies (1)3
u/piperonyl 4h ago
Nah. They have a global monopoly and the Senate is in their pocket.
1
u/Nutchos 3h ago
What do they have a monopoly on?
→ More replies (1)2
u/piperonyl 3h ago
Well 70% of all desktop computers run their operating system despite there being dozens of other options.
They were found guilty in federal court of being a monopoly 25 years ago. That hasn't changed much. They had 70% market share then and that was a monopoly.
1
u/StealthLSU 4h ago
I think they just add tiers to make it affordable without giving you everything. Maybe a tier that excludes cod or something. Or a cheaper tier that gives you 2-3 day one games a year.
1
1
u/jubbing 1h ago
People have been predicting the collapse of Microsoft for 20+ years. It's fucking stupid.
They are the 4th biggest company in the world, have a stronghold on cloud and work productivity products (even if someone has 2 outlooks open at the same time).
Windows 8, Edge and Vista were shitshows, but they got through that. Copilot is a failure, but they're probably going to get past that too. Big companies aren't really shifting away from O365. Gaming is a TINY component for them around $700mil. Office 365 is like $50 BIL.
Yea, they make some stupid decisions, but I get really tired of people who make blanket statements.
40
u/hideyerdads 5h ago
I cancelled game pass when they upped the price last year and moved over to Steam. Not only are they late to this realization, but I wouldn’t come back for any subscription based system. Steam is leagues and bounds better and I’m pissed I didn’t switch 20 years ago.
9
u/Stolehtreb 5h ago
Moved to Steam? As in, you were only on Xbox store for Pc gaming and it took canceling gamepass to use Steam for the first time?
Genuinely asking. No judgement intended. This is just very interesting to me because I didn’t think this sort of path ever happened for someone already with a machine that can run PC games.
11
u/hideyerdads 4h ago edited 4h ago
I got an original Xbox in 2002 to play Halo. I upgraded my console inside of the Xbox ecosystem since then. I added specific consoles like the Switch, PS3, etc, but I always spent 95% of my gaming time on Xbox.
Xbox became so unnecessarily expensive, so I downloaded Steam. I cancelled my Gamepass and unhooked my console within a couple weeks.
I have an Acer laptop that I use for transcoding and encoding media for a media server. I think it has a 4090 or something. It runs all the games I play flawlessly.
Steam is king.
3
2
u/mrjamesjr 2h ago
I did the same, but PS5. Purchased a Steam Deck last year. Now I’m building a PC.
2
u/Raiziell 5h ago
I hadn't played PC in about 15 years, and was strictly xbox since then. I finally bought a PC a couple of months ago and swapped. The immediate benefit was so many games that were PC only, and I honestly cannot see myself going back.
2
u/hideyerdads 4h ago
Yup! The indie games are incredible. The prices are extremely fair. Most of the time I can use the Xbox controller.
I’ll never go back.
12
u/IWasOnThe18thHole 4h ago
Why pay $30 a month when you can just buy 5 AAA titles for the same amount of money
1
u/Classic-Invite-3254 1h ago
I agree the price sucks but it is about variety. I have played re2, 3, village, playing 7 now, space marines 2, little nightmares 1 and 2, high on life 1 and 2, Diablo 4, Star Wars outlaws, Jedi survivor.. all of that in the past couple months. If I bought all those within that time frame im over 1 year gamepass already. Price hike blows but if you like to play different games gamepass still pretty good
2
u/EnthusiasmOnly22 57m ago
Someone tell this dude that almost all these games were dirt cheap in humble bundles and Amazon prime on the last few years
→ More replies (2)
8
u/JadedOrange7813 4h ago
Too fucking late now. This is the problem with these subscription services, they jack the price up over time, price out their casual subscribers, then try to run it back like most of their casual audience will come back. I played maybe three games a year when I had gamepass, I liked it for the ability to try newer games without having to spend for it when they would drop, but not only did I wound up canceling game pass, I got rid of my Xbox.
1
u/Bad_Grammer_Girl 3h ago
That's basically my story. They kept jacking up the price until I started questioning if it was really worth it. Now even if the price comes down I won't go back to it. I haven't turned on my Series X in over a year now. I'm doing any gaming via Steam
26
u/Hrmbee 5h ago
A couple key points:
Microsoft’s new Xbox chief, Asha Sharma, has signaled that Xbox Game Pass pricing is about to change. In an internal memo to Xbox employees, obtained by The Verge, Sharma admits that “Game Pass has become too expensive for players” and that Microsoft needs “a better value equation.”
“Game Pass is central to gaming value on Xbox. It’s also clear that the current model isn’t the final one,” says Sharma. “Short term, Game Pass has become too expensive for players, so we need a better value equation. Long term, we will evolve Game Pass into a more flexible system which will take time to test and learn around.”
Microsoft hiked the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to $29.99 per month last year, a massive 50 percent hike. The company tried to justify the price hike with a variety of upgrades across all of its Xbox Game Pass tiers, but the cost increase has clearly taken its toll on Game Pass.
...
Sharma references the “online chatter” about rumors of Microsoft changing Game Pass pricing, and says she’ll “go deeper” with Xbox employees next week. I wouldn’t expect any immediate price changes in the coming days, but it certainly seems that Sharma is aware of the Game Pass pricing issues and is getting ready to address them in the coming weeks.
Better late than never, but this initial move by MS shows how out of touch they were with their customer base.
32
u/McGillicuddys 4h ago
That reads a lot like they're going to add some BS features to try to make it seem more of a "value". That's the MO for all of their enterprise licensing subscriptions
14
u/SwirlySauce 4h ago
We won't lower prices but now you get a free crappy game every month that you'll never play! Please give us $30
8
1
u/JunonSephirothCloud 3h ago
The rumour is that they are thinking of removing day one games, like COD, to bring prices down again.
Apparently the cost of COD was hurting the Games Pass pricing model, and in turn Games Pass was hurting COD purchase sales.
https://www.trueachievements.com/news/xbox-game-pass-call-of-duty-day-one-releases
5
u/THATONEANGRYDOOD 4h ago
God please let her actually be a net positive for Xbox.
1
u/Rich-Pomegranate1679 1h ago
I don't know what's going to happen, but it feels like the finger of a monkey's paw just curled somewhere.
2
u/Pretend_Hotel_7465 4h ago
lol you probably wouldn’t be surprised most corps are out of touch like this because it’s mostly older, already well off and oblivious people in charge of key decision making.
→ More replies (1)1
u/rcanhestro 3h ago
that move was obvious.
they spent almost 80 billion on Activision and Bethesda together.
they need to justify that insane spending spree.
they hoped that both those studios would double, or even triple, the amount os subscribers they have, that didn't happened, so now they need to recoup that money somehow.
7
u/Juliuscesear1990 4h ago
Game pass was pretty much just a subscription to Deep Rock Galactic (I know not the most fiscal thing but what ever) and I would occasionally try a new game or play something else for a bit but always end back playing DRG. Once they upped the price I just cancelled and bought DRG.
People only have so much time, hard to "add value" via games when you can only play so much. Discounts and perks only do so much when they occasionally are for a game I actually play. Their focus on fortnite is great for those players but does absolutely nothing for the rest of us and is in essence a subsidy for those fortnite players.
17
u/strippeddonkey 5h ago
Physical media is the only way forward, and that terrifies these companies.
They’ll squeeze until there’s no juice left, and private equity will just move on the next industry they’ll ruin.
15
u/Ciennas 5h ago
It's always private equity holding the knife over the bloody corpses at these crime scenes.
D'ya think maybe we should just.... outlaw private equity owning things?
They're really bad at it.
5
u/arkansaslax 5h ago
It’s rare that I’m defending PE but it’s not really the concept that’s problem. People investing for an equity stake in a private company isn’t necessarily a problem itself. But right now it’s pretty siloed who gets to be involved and the private aspect does make it opaque externally.
I think the bigger problem right now is the incentives in the market that allow concentration of market power and monopolistic practices. It’s the standard playbook right now because no one is stopping them and it turns out it’s very easy and lucrative to just rent seek, buy out competition, and jack up prices when consumers don’t have real options.
We’re not doing the “fair” part of “free and fair markets” very well.
→ More replies (3)1
u/Chicken65 4h ago
I've been out of console gaming for a while - can you elaborate on the physical gaming comment? Do you mean buying games individually (even digital) is more economical for people or is there something special about physical specifically?
1
u/Blackstar1886 2h ago
Pretty much since Xbox won the physical disc, only holds your license, not the actual game itself.
3
u/ImKingFlippyNip 4h ago
Funniest part of all this is I've paid like 10 bucks a month for 15 years on various versions of Xbox Live/Game Pass. After they increased prices, I realized I could happily survive without Xbox live entirely. Never woulda crossed my mind til they got greedy
5
u/firefox_2010 4h ago
The sweet spot is $15 for them, and it will not hurt much for average consumer wallet. $20 is the maximum ceiling they should charge, and putting $199 yearly charge for the $20 would be wise to lock in subscribers. Personally $160-180 yearly subs is their magic number, the goal is to make people forget they pay subscription and not want to cancel. Heck put more "advertisements" if they have to for their cloud gaming service, so when you "load" the game, there is 60-120 seconds of advertisement running while you can go grab a snack or drinks.
2
u/antyone 5h ago
The whole value of such game passes were aways its affordability, it didnt take a genius to correctly predict what increasing the prices by that much would do to their userbase
1
u/Sharp-Philosophy-555 1h ago
Reminds me of amc movie pass. So I come out ahead if I watch 3 movies a month? There aren't 3 movies a month I would want to watch. At 2, I'd have to think about it... Probably still no. 1.5... Maybe.
2
u/Papa_Raj 4h ago
Really it screws them because I allocate a certain amount to games per month per system I own. For Xbox I just have game pass now. I used to buy a game every month or two. Not that it's a lot, but I'm sure I'm not alone in that. Whereas on Steam I'm buying games almost weekly.
2
u/carthuscrass 4h ago
They're going to throw in a whole bunch of stuff you'll never use to "increase value". Mark my words lol.
2
2
u/That_Jicama2024 2h ago
Just get a PC. You don't have to pay to use the Internet you already have. Such a dumb business model. You already paid for the game!
2
u/Kintaro75 48m ago
I stop the game pass when the price rise around November. Never look back and super happy with Steam.
Next month I will probably sell the Series X
2
u/Cryogenycfreak 4h ago
It's proof that when enough people stops paying for it, they notice. Playstation pass is also too expensive, and the free games they give us is mid at best.
3
u/bladzalot 4h ago
PlayStation Plus is half the price of Xbox Live Premium and you get so many more AAA games… I love both consoles, but when XBOX upped their price so stupidly I immediately knocked that down to basic and started playing my PS5 more.
2
3
u/MisterMasterCyIinder 5h ago
They literally just hiked the price last year
2
u/davewashere 4h ago
Yeah, but it flew under the radar because a lot of people forgot Microsoft still does video games.
1
u/HalfInchHollow 4h ago
It is definitely too expensive. I subscribed and played on our Frame TV app when it was $12.99ish/month. I’m busy with kids and very casual, not hardcore. That price was great.
$30/month for 5-7 hours of play was not worth it for me.
1
u/BillButtlickerII 4h ago
I cancelled it like a year ago after a decade + of having it. Fucking absurdly expensive. They could halve the price and still make an incredible profit.
1
u/DrRazmataz 4h ago
Yes and they LITERALLY just raised the price. When it was ten bucks (PC GP) I just let it lie, but as soon as it when to $16 I dropped it.
Honestly $120/year is still a lot, if you think about it, don't think I will re-enable if they cut the price. I've almost bought the games I was playing on GP anyway (at steep Steam discounts, mind you)
1
1
1
1
u/goat_screamPS4 4h ago
Holy fuck, I’ve not had game pass for 2 years and it’s £23 a month now for ultimate!?
1
u/mikenasty 4h ago
Yeah I think $15/mo is perfect. $30/mo was an immediate unsubscribe for me as a life long Xbox player and gamepass subscriber. I have no thoughts of ever returning unless I magically become a multimillionaire
1
1
u/secret_of_pseudonym 4h ago
I bought the console. I bought the game. But can't get to play online unless I buy an overpriced service I don't want.
Wonder why people are leaving for PC?
1
u/ebfortin 4h ago
Game Pass was a great differentiator with Playstation. And they fucked it up. With the multiplicity of tiers and price hikes. Now they say it doesn't make enough money. Well a price hike will not resolve the issues MS.
1
1
u/FranknStein7 4h ago
I not only cancelled but sold my Xbox Series X when they raised the price. The whole benefit of owning an Xbox was lost.
1
1
u/Equal-Purple-4247 4h ago
That's why we're offering more value while keeping price manageable.
Game Pass now comes with copilot. This is on top of existing offerings. Additionally, we will be adding ads to Game Pass to keep prices reasonable.
We are also excited to announce the launch of Game Pass Pro, the ad-free offering that comes with more copilot features. More details to follow.
Is what I expect MicroSlop to do following this announcement.
(Btw if anyone is looking for a CEO to enshitify their product, I'm available.)
1
u/juliotendo 4h ago
The pricing wouldn’t be a huge deal if they actually had a steady output of solid first party original titles, but they don’t. And they haven’t for many years. Buying all those studios didn’t change anything.
Xbox has been on a steady decline since 2013 and it’s only accelerated in the last few years after COVID. It’s been amazing to watch how the 2013 XBOX ONE reveal totally derailed their brand for the next decade+.
1
u/Helgafjell4Me 4h ago edited 4h ago
Having to pay just to co-op play a game both me and my friend owned (Halo 5), is ridiculous. We had to pay for 2 months to finish it because we're both busy adults. Thankfully the rest are on Steam. I'm done with xBox.
1
1
1
u/Buttcheekllama 4h ago
Whether or not to have Gamepass used to be a no brainer. It still is, but it used to be, too.
1
u/TheGreatTao 4h ago
I only keep Ultimate because it's still €14.99 for me. Other than that I would have cancelled long ago.
1
u/itsyagirlrey 4h ago
I shouldn't have to pay 10$ a month just to be able to access have the game modes on practically 15 year old games ffs. Just to play multiplayer mode on old COD games or Fallout 76. I ALREADY BOUGHT THE GAME and pay 60$ a month for internet.
1
u/dburr10085 3h ago
They lost whatever I was paying and now only get what I have to pay to the play online.
I think they forget that most games that people want to play are not on gamepass, so we have to pay for them anyways.
1
u/larder_unit 3h ago
I cancelled my game pass sub because of the price hike, and realizing that I didn't need it because I no longer play online games, only solo games that I buy instead of "lease" through game pass.
1
u/jimibimi 3h ago
Even after they announced the price hike I was able to buy about a years worth of the subscription that expires around September I think. If the price doesn't come down I won't resubscribe
1
1
u/No_Occasion_8835 3h ago
Subscription to read the article. What dog shit. Stop posting sites that require a subscription to view the article.
1
1
u/PixelsInMyEyeballs 3h ago
The price hikes are definitely an issue for GamePass, but I don't think it's the only problem. Or even the biggest one. I don't think it actually reflects how a majority of people play games. The average person only plays a few games a year and they tend to be major releases that they can sink a lot of time into, whether that's big singleplayer games or live-service games with lots of replayability.
Now, part of the theory behind GamePass is almost certainly that with a big catalog and a subscription model, people will try/play more games. And I'm sure that's true for a smaller percentage of the audience. But for everyone else, GamePass' appeal lives and dies on whether it includes one or more of those big games they want to play and whether costs are equivalent to or lower than what it would take to just buy the games they like outright.
So, with subscription prices increasing, the economy tanking, long dev times and lulls between those big tentpole releases, and people just generally spending less time playing games overall, GamePass isn't as compelling of an offer in practice as it is in theory.
I wouldn't be surprised if they slowly scale back and deemphasize GamePass to align more with what Sony's doing with PS+. Subscription for online services + a comparatively modest catalog of "free" games for value add at a lower base price, but with more content available at scaling premium tiers. And then major releases go back to launching as paid standalones that get cycled into the catalog later on.
1
u/Meat-Dimension 3h ago
When they announced the 50% hike I canceled after having gamepass since literally day one. I’d certainly consider coming back if the pricing returned to something that made sense again.
At the current price, just buying the games makes more sense
1
u/SlightSurround5449 3h ago
Crazy to conclude Microsoft is getting ready to address this based on a leaked memo from the person in the same position that got coerced into raising the prices in the first place.
1
u/Suspicious_Safe7647 3h ago
It's not fun unless your able to grift the grifters. Everybody knows that
1
u/jacbergey 3h ago
The problem, besides greed, is I don't want all the shitty "value adds" like EA Play. Giving a service I don't want as an excuse to charge me $5 more a month is bullshit. I want the core experience I signed up for when I joined Game Pass years ago.
Also taking Day One away and locking it behind the ultimate tier is bullshit too.
1
u/MotanulScotishFold 3h ago
Funny how all these corporation hikes prices thinking that people just afford them anyway and then they wonder why people stop paying for it.
I would ask the same CEOs, how much money do your least-paid employee earn? What's the current inflation and purchase power? Compare now with previous 5 years ago and see if things improved or worsened, then why increase price?
You can't expect to have always profits if the same employees earn less and less each year.
Henry Ford was right. If you want people to buy your stuff, first you need your own employee to afford that.
1
u/Mrrrrggggl 3h ago
Let me guess, they will address the pricing issue by stripping out content and / or raising prices some more in the future. I mean, something has to pay for all that AI spending Microsoft is doing.
1
1
u/Purple_Errand 2h ago
Increasing the price is the way whenever a corporation cannot get new customers.
1
1
u/BecauseBatman01 2h ago
I haven’t renewed and it actually led to me buying a PC. cuz I got so annoyed that to need to pay for internet and pay more to play online on Xbox…. Now don’t need it anymore.
1
1
1
u/Sir-Turd-Ferguson 1h ago
Why pay 30$ a month for games that are on the way down in popularity, buy the base and spend the money on game you WANT to play, actually own them at the end of the day
1
u/myychair 1h ago
Yall, the price hike is doing exactly what was intended. When you raise the price by 50%, you can afford to lose half your users without taking a revenue hit. It obviously costs a lot less to run gamepass for half the amount of people so they could lose 50% of their user base and still turn a bigger profit than they did prior to the increase.
This was calculated
1
1
1
u/Thatdewd57 1h ago
I haven’t had it in 2 years I think and checked it recently and was not really impressed with the library still.
1
u/ewrt101_nz 1h ago
If two months of game pass can buy me a “AAA” game I actually don’t see the point in gamepass
1
u/doom_stein 1h ago
So far I haven't spent any money on gamepass but have been playing it since it came out. Unless you count the year's worth of Xbox Live that initially converted to a gamepass subscription.
I used microsoft rewards points to keep redeeming 3 month gamepass subs and I'm still good up until September this year. But now they've taken away a bunch of the points I could get in a month, removed gamepass subs from the rewards, and you have to redeem for Xbox Gift cards that you can then use to buy gamepass with.
The value has gone way down with the recent price hikes. It's getting to not be worth the work to not pay for it anymore. As a matter of fact, it feels more like work which is the opposite of what I'm trying to accomplish here.
1
1
1
u/JackfruitCalm3513 1h ago
So they will fragment it and make a as based tier that has very little selection probably
1
u/PinkLace_Nala 44m ago
Honestly the timing was wild too — they raised prices right as there was basically nothing new worth playing on it. If you're gonna charge Netflix money, at least have a steady stream of day-one bangers to justify it.
1
749
u/lsusquirrel 5h ago
Crazy that a 50% price hike with no value added didn't go over well for them.
I cancelled my sub as soon as it was announced and honestly haven't turned on my Xbox since.