Microsoft has made the decision to up the price of Game Pass this summer, causing the price to go up as high as $2 more per month. Like Netflix and other services, it is slowly injecting little increases here and there to help inflate profits and it likely has a lot to do with Starfield coming out soon.
The new price increase will affect Xbox Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate tiers (PC Game Pass will remain as is for now). The price for Xbox Game Pass will be going up by $1 to $10.99/month while the Game Pass Ultimate will be increasing by $2 to $16.99/month. It may not seem like much, but it is close to adding 1-1.5 months a year to the old price.
It’s fair if you live and breath video games every month (and have the time for that). However, if you hardly find the time to game as much as others, Game Pass can be a costly option. It really makes me miss subscribing via Xbox Gold as it was much more affordable ($60 or less per year vs the new $131.88 price of Xbox Game Pass or $203.88 or Ultimate). Especially, when I am buried with games I need to catch up on.
(In the US) The price will be kicking in for new subscribers next month (July 6th) and will be postponed till August 13th for current subscribers.
Again, this likely has a lot to do with Starfield coming out (September) and the anticipated demand for the game the company is predicting. That and its expectations of winning the fight to close on the purchase of Activision Blizzard. It just seems perfectly timed out as a company expecting a large increase in new subscribers.
So if you did plan on subscribing for the long run, you might jump on it now with a long investment under the current prices to save a little money. As it is just going to keep going up if the company thinks people are willing to pay the increased prices.
