Xbox Game Pass is an even better deal for everybody… except for most of its highest-paying subscribers. Game Pass, Microsoft’s gaming subscription service, will offer more games and access to cloud titles for those paying between $5 and $15 on both console and PC. Ultimate-tier subscribers are also getting more, but it comes at a steep cost—a price steep enough that it seems there are fewer real “deals” left in gaming.
In a blog post, Xbox said Game Pass Ultimate will now cost $30 a month, up from $20. With the price hike, Microsoft is offering a fair few upgrades. First is the promise that gamers will be able to play upwards of 75 games available to the service on day one each year. So if you were already planning to play The Outer Worlds 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, or Ninja Gaiden 4 this year, you could save some money before Christmas. Those who pay up also get access to Fortnite Crew and Ubisoft+ Classics titles. This is the second price hike to Game Pass Ultimate since 2024. Hey, at least those few gamers who already pay for the Fortnite Battle Pass and Xbox Game Pass may save $2.
New Game Pass plans: Essential, Premium, and Ultimate
Xbox also added 45 more games to the service, some of which are accessible if you opt for the two lower subscription tiers. The Standard plan is now labeled “Premium” and still costs the same $15 a month. Core subscriptions are being replaced with “Essential” for $10 per month. Premium and Essential don’t have access to day-one titles, though if you pay $15, you’ll now get access to games like Hogwarts Legacy and some of the paywalled content in games like League of Legends or Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege X. Ultimate, as I said, is $30 a month.
Every plan gets cloud gaming
You should peruse the entire list of new games to see if there’s anything there you want to play. Otherwise, the big upgrade is now everyone on Game Pass now has access to cloud gaming. Xbox said it’s no longer in beta, and while Ultimate subscribers get priority, every Game Pass subscriber can now stream games at up to 1440p. You’ll be more limited in which games you can play in the cloud if you opt for Essential or Premium plans. Microsoft allows gamers to stream select titles they own on its servers as well.
Is Xbox Game Pass still worth it? Depends on how many games you play.
In many ways, the Ultimate tier is still full of value. The number of quality AAA and excellent indie titles available is enough to keep you going for a full year. But that’s the problem. If you have limited time to game each month, and it takes you many weeks to push through a 30-hour playthrough of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, you may end up spending the same amount as if you just bought the game yourself. Gaming on the whole is getting more expensive. Since Nintendo set the score during the Switch 2 launch, the new standard for AAA releases is $70 or—in some cases—$80 even. If you end up with Game Pass Ultimate for six months, you’ll spend $180, the equivalent of two new releases plus Hollow Knight: Silksong.
How well gamers can justify the new price will be based on how much they care about whatever new titles come to the subscription platform. Microsoft is applying a thick balm to take away the sting of a 50% price hike, but Xbox is promising to supply more of what it was already offering. GeForce Now, Nvidia’s game streaming service for titles you already own, lets you stream up to 4K at their $20-per-month tier. Nvidia just updated its service to enable better streaming quality and a higher-end GPU available for some titles. Having used both Game Pass and GeForce Now for cloud gaming, the latter is certainly a better option.
Let’s also consider what games will be out on Xbox next year. There’s High on Life 2 confirmed as a day-one title already, but other major releases like 007: First Light won’t be on Game Pass at all. Then there’s the elephant in the room in the form of Grand Theft Auto VI. I’ve spoken with analysts who fully expect the game to cost $100 at launch. If the game hopes to make the promised $3 billion in sales in the first year, then it’s certainly going to stay away from Game Pass. GTA VI could open the floodgates for even more ultra-expensive games. Xbox itself promised to boost game prices to $80 before rolling that back. When five-year-old Xbox consoles now cost more than ever after two consecutive price hikes—pushing a base Xbox Series X to $650—all future “deals” will look like recreations of the prices we once took for granted.
Kyle Barr
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