Xbox Game Pass gets price drop at the cost of day one Call Of Duty

While it’s still more expensive than it was before the price hike, Xbox fans sound pleased with Game Pass’s recent adjustments.

Just a week ago, Xbox boss Asha Sharma, who took over from Phil Spencer back in February, admitted in an internal memo to employees that the Xbox Game Pass service had grown too expensive, suggesting that Sharma was looking into bringing the price back down.

As a reminder, Microsoft bumped the price of Game Pass last October, with Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions becoming over 50% more expensive at £22.99 a month.

The move was unsurprisingly unpopular with fans and sparked widespread outrage, but that price hike has now been reverted, at least partially.

Game Pass subscription prices haven’t completely returned to how they were previously. In fact, the Essential and Premium tiers, which have limited offerings, are unchanged and remain £6.99 a month and £10.99 a month respectively.

However, Game Pass Ultimate, which includes access to new Xbox published games as soon as they launch, is now £6 cheaper at £16.99 a month. For the record, before October’s price hike, it was £14.99 a month.

PC Game Pass, meanwhile, has also been reduced from £13.49 a month to £10.99 a month.

In addition, new Call Of Duty games will no longer be day one additions to the service. This was something Microsoft touted as part of its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, but it’s clearly not been as beneficial for the company as it hoped.

It had been suggested that Microsoft could do this since Call Of Duty has continued to bleed players even after joining Game Pass. Plus, with new games essentially being free for subscribers, their presence on Game Pass no doubt impacted their sales performances.

Not that Microsoft admits to any of that that, with the Xbox Wire blog post only saying, ‘Beginning this year, future Call Of Duty titles won’t join Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch.’

Instead, the plan is to add them to Game Pass ‘during the following holiday season (about a year later).’ Plus, any Call Of Duty games already on the service will remain where they are and not be pulled off.

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With how many stories there have been of games and consoles raising in price, with the PlayStation 5 shooting up by £90 last month, it’s a welcome change of pace to see prices go down for once.

Granted, there’s no telling if this will spark a resurgence of Game Pass subscriptions, but first impressions over on the Xbox subreddit appear positive.

‘Wow they actually did it, fair play to them,’ says Gameofthrones3058, adding that, ‘People who absolutely love Call Of Duty will have no choice but to pay pretty much full price if they want to have the game at launch.’

Stumpy493 calls it a ‘win for gamers who voiced our displeasure,’ but notes that the price is ‘still higher than it was previously and with Call Of Duty removed day one.’

Some fans, like dustygultch, suggest that if removing Call Of Duty helped bring the price down, then Microsoft should take out other benefits that they don’t care about, such as the Fortnite Crew subscriptions, and drop the price further.

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