Microsoft has officially decided that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate wasn’t already bleeding your wallet enough, so they’re cranking the price up another $10 a month. That means your once-cozy $20 subscription is now $30 per month or $360 a year. For context, that’s more than most people spend on actual video games in an entire year—unless your idea of fun is buying every Fifa, Madden, and Call of Duty release just to see the numbers on the box art change.
- Essential: $9.99
- Premium: $14.99
- PC: $16.49
- Ultimate: $29.99
Check out all the details of these updated plans [here].
At this price point, the only people who are really “winning” are those who play a metric shit ton of games—we’re talking Twitch streamers, YouTubers, or the occasional gaming masochist who looks at their backlog and thinks, “Yes, I will finish 37 RPGs this month.” For the rest of us? For the folks who want to come home after work, turn off our brains, and spend an hour dying in Elden Ring before bed? That $30 is starting to look about as useful as paying rent on an outhouse.
The one real perk Game Pass still has going for it is access to older, harder-to-find titles. Case in point: Fable II. The original Fable (2004) and Fable III (2010) have options—on PC, through Steam (if you can hunt down a key), or on refurbished Xbox consoles. But Fable II? That sucker was an Xbox 360 exclusive, and unless you’ve got a 360 that hasn’t already succumbed to the dreaded Red Ring of Death, you’re not playing it anywhere but Game Pass. And while eBay is littered with “fully repaired” 360s for around $150, let’s be honest—buying one of those is basically paying for an electronic time bomb.
But this rant isn’t about the tragically limited ways you can experience the best game in the Fable series (yes, we said it). It’s about the value—or lack thereof—of Game Pass at $30 a month. Even Microsoft seems to know this new pricing looks like a mugging in broad daylight, because they’ve quietly started whispering about new, lower-tier options. Sounds good, right? Except one of these new, unannounced, tiers, according to a leaker, will allegedly come with… ads.
Earlier today, Microsoft took to their socials to talk about the new tiers with Game Pass and their changes that supposedly benefit the dwindling Xbox fanbase. In the announcement video, we are seeing three tiers- Essential, Premium, and Ultimate. To be clear, we have not seen any official confirmation on a tier lower than Essential (which replaces Core), but online rumblings are saying a possible, even lower, free tier, is possibly on the way.
Nobody knows if this lower ad-filled tier is actually happening (though the leaker got about 50% right ahead of the announcement including the new updated names), or whether Microsoft was hesitant to announce it publicly as part of the divisive price increases and restructuring here. It is possible that Microsoft will be slipping that in separately at a later date without drawing too much attention to it, or perhaps they are just testing the waters first to get an idea just how sharp the online pitchforks would get before they speak on it in any official capacity.
To be fair, Microsoft hasn’t said anything about ads or a free tier, yet. But it is hard not to see the parallels between how Microsoft is treating Game Pass and say, other streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, etc. Each one of these cloud-based, online juggernauts continues to increase prices offering what they claim are incredible values, savings, and all sorts of positives for the consumer (they aren’t). And if you have experienced lower tiered streaming services, you will know just how painful dealing with advertisements can be.
And considering that the leaker who caused this online shit storm ahead of the official announcement was right on the money about the name changes and a few other key details, and that Microsoft would definitely pull some shit like this by leaving off an ad-filled tier to avoid even more backlash only to silently post it up alongside the other tiers, we can still see this happening. Eventually. And we can see just how awful a gaming experience this would be for literally everyone.
But picture this: you grind out a sweaty Call of Duty PvP match, pull off a clutch Victory, and just as you’re basking in your hard-fought glory, your entire screen is hijacked by a Burger King ad screaming about Whopper value deals. Or maybe every time you boot up Game Pass, you’re forced to watch a 15-second ad for Tide Pods before you can play Halo Infinite.
The only people still holding a candle for Xbox are the ones who either grew up with Halo in their bloodstream or can’t afford to switch ecosystems. For everyone else? The console wars have already been lost, and Microsoft is basically wandering the battlefield begging people to buy scraps off the corpses.
Okay, maybe that metaphor’s a little grim. But you get the point: at $30 a month, Game Pass Ultimate is a terrible deal for 98% of players. And if the alternative is watching ads before every quest, boss fight, or match? Yeah, we’ll pass.
