Xbox cuts Game Pass Ultimate price to $22.99. Future Call of Duty games won’t be included at launch

PC Game Pass also reduced to $13.99

Xbox has reduced the price of Game Pass Ultimate by over 23%, from $29.99 to $22.99 a month.

It’s also reduced PC Game Pass from $16.49 to $13.99 a month.

As a result, future Call of Duty games won’t be included in either service when they launch. New Call of Duty titles will now arrive on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass around a year later. Existing Call of Duty games, including last year’s Black Ops 7, will remain available in the service.

The cuts come six months after Xbox significantly raised the price of Game Pass in October last year. Game Pass Ultimate rose from $19.99 to $29.99, and PC Game Pass increased from $11.99 to $16.49. At the same time, Xbox added the Ubisoft+ Classics Collection and the Fortnite Crew subscription service to Game Pass Ultimate. It also promised to release more than 75 day one games into Ultimate every year.

In a blog post, Xbox acknowledged that there isn’t a single model that suits everyone, but said the changes are a reaction “to a lot of the feedback we’ve gotten so far. We’ll continue to listen and learn”.

My Take:

Subscription services don’t typically fall in price. Although it’s worth noting that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is still 35% more than it was two years ago.

There are no guarantees from Xbox that this price is permanent. In fact, its promise to ‘listen and learn’ suggests more changes are in the works.

The big losers from this cut are those who subscribe to Game Pass for a month or two to play the latest Call of Duty, and then leave. These gamers now either have to be patient, or buy the game in full.

For all other gamers, it’s a clear win. For long-term subscribers to Game Pass Ultimate, this works out as an annual saving of $84. Even if they feel obligated to buy the next Call of Duty at launch, that still works out as a saving.

But Xbox will find it difficult to re-engage lapsed Game Pass players, and it will take more than a price drop to convince many of them back. The company will need to lean into its big roster of games for the year, which includes fan-favourites Forza, Fable, Halo and Gears of War. It’ll be no accident that these changes have been made ahead of the launch of Forza Horizon 6 next month, which notably isn’t available on PlayStation 5 at launch. The racing title, from UK studio Playground Games, is currently the third most wishlisted game on Steam with nearly 2.7 million wishlists. That looks set to be a key title.

But as I said last week, Xbox Game Pass is struggling for growth and it isn’t delivering on that initial dream Microsoft had back in 2018 when it started putting brand new titles into the service. This price drop is unlikely to solve that, and I fully expect bigger changes, and perhaps a more flexible service, to follow.

As Microsoft rightly observed, its audience come from different backgrounds, with different tastes, and there ‘isn’t a single model that’s best for everyone.’ That is the challenge it still needs to solve.