We live in a world where everything just gets more expensive… Today I paid £1.90 per litre of diesel, and I expect that in the weeks to come, even that will sound like a bargain. The PS5 recently announced a heavy-duty price increase: a £70 base price for new games is the new normal, and don’t even get me started on the price of a couple of sticks of RAM. Price cuts are sadly a thing of the past… Until now. Apparently, even though Xbox only announced their hefty price increase for Game Pass Ultimate from £14.99 to £22.99 here in the UK, they have now done almost a full U-turn, but remember, all that glitters is not gold because that price drop comes at a cost.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is now priced at £16.99 / $22.99 per month, marking a noticeable £6 / $7 reduction. On paper, that’s the first win for Xbox fans in some time. Especially after last year’s steep price hikes. But this new “value” comes with a pretty major compromise.
That compromise? No More Day-One Call of Duty. Going forward, new Call of Duty titles will no longer launch on Game Pass Ultimate on day one. Instead, they’ll be added to the service a full year after release.
This move doesn’t come completely out of nowhere. A recently leaked internal memo from new Xbox boss Asha Sharma suggested that Ultimate had become “too expensive” for what it offered. A fair suggestion if you ask me. At the time, cutting back on premium day-one releases, especially something as huge as Call of Duty, was floated as a possibility to justify rolling back the price of Game Pass.
Now, that possibility has become reality.
The loss of Call of Duty may come as a sting for some of you. Personally, I’d take the price cut every day of the week. However, if you are in the camp of specimens that will miss Call of Duty day one, it’s not all bad news.
Firstly, as you already know, your monthly fee is going down. Secondly, existing Call of Duty titles will remain in the library. The key change only affects future releases, meaning the back catalogue remains untouched.
It’s not just console players benefiting from the changes.
PC Game Pass is now down to £10.99 / $13.99 per month, and like Ultimate, it will continue to offer existing Call of Duty, leaving today’s lineup still intact for current subscribers.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has confirmed that Game Pass Premium and Essential tiers remain unchanged, keeping their current inflated prices. At least for the time being.
This shift follows widespread criticism after October’s controversial price hikes, which saw Game Pass Ultimate rise by roughly 50%. Microsoft tried to soften the blow by bundling in perks like Ubisoft+ Classics and Fortnite Crew, alongside existing benefits like EA Play and Cloud Gaming.
But for many players, the value just didn’t add up. If you didn’t engage with that stuff already, you weren’t about to start now… but you were still paying for it.
Despite this blunder, Microsoft seems to be course-correcting, offering a cheaper subscription, but, simultaneously, trimming one of its biggest selling points in the process.
All that said, in a world of constant price increases, the bottom line is Game Pass Ultimate is more affordable than it was… but whether it’s actually better value now depends on how much you care about playing the next Call of Duty on day one.
VGT-Skyf