Microsoft made a big announcement regarding the price of its popular game streaming service, Xbox Game Pass. The price of Game Pass Ultimate has dropped from $29.99 a month, to $23.99, a reduction of about 23%. PC Game Pass also received a new price discount of $13.99 (down from $16.49).
However, that’s not the only big change. As a related consequence, future Call of Duty games will no longer launch simultaneously on Game Pass. Instead, the release to streaming will stagger a year later around the following holiday season.
Existing Call of Duty games are unaffected, and will continue to be available on Game Pass Ultimate.
It’s an interesting move that decouples one of Microsoft’s most lucrative franchises from the wider package.
In order to play the new Call of Duty at launch, players will need to purchase it directly. Meanwhile, those that don’t care about Call of Duty can enjoy a monthly discount on the huge library of other games.
The math of the discount comes at a savings of around $70 a year, just enough to purchase that new Call of Duty at launch, and still enjoy Game Pass for everything else.
The lower tiers of Game Pass, Essential and Premium, are unaffected by the price change. Each tier unlocks access to more games, with Ultimate including over 500 games, plus subscriptions to Fortnite Crew, EA Play, and Ubisoft Classics.
I could easily see a future where Xbox structures the Game Pass into multiple different packages, probably by genre. Cozy games, first-person shooters, strategy games, etc, allowing players to pick and choose the games they want wider access to.
