Looks like your need to renew Xbox Game Pass error (how to fix)

This seems to be an odd error that you might run into from time to time with the Xbox consoles (Xbox One or newer it seems) and once we have seen a little more than usual as of late. During such an event, you would run into it when you turn on the console, select a game, and open it. You would then be faced with an error that says something similar to “Looks like your need to renew Xbox Game Pass”. It will then kick you out of the game and right back to the dashboard.

Now, your default response might be to panic. Especially, if you don’t currently subscribe to Xbox Game Pass. If your Xbox Game Pass membership is just current or you are trying to access a normal disc or digital game that you personally own (not part of the streaming service) and have a current Xbox Live Gold subscription, then everything is ok.

It appears to be an odd glitch in the Matrix of things that occurs from time to time. You may never run into it, or you may run into it a small number of times. Either way, the fix is easy. A little annoying that it has to be done, but easy nonetheless.

This just means you have instant-on enabled and it got confused for some reason or another. Simply press and hold the Xbox icon button on your controller as if you were going to shut it down like normal. Instead of shutting it down, choose to restart the console instead. This will fully shut the console down and reboot it. It should take a lot longer than normal to boot because you fully shut it down this time. Once your dashboard comes back up, try opening the game again and you should be fine.

You can also attempt this without the controller by holding power button for 10 seconds to do a full shutdown from there. Then wait a number of seconds and press it again. Again, it should take a lot longer to boot up than normal. However, once it comes back, you should be good to go.

Some have claimed they had to pull the power from the wall, wait so many seconds, plug it in, and turn it back on. We haven’t experience that ourselves, but it is something to keep in mind in case the above method doesn’t solve the problem for you.