Microsoft Turns Game Pass Into a Hard Pass (Premium)

Microsoft has made a mess of Xbox Game Pass, turning what should have been a win into a far more questionable future. This change was poorly communicated and badly timed, and it undermines the Xbox platform and is understandably a disappointment to fans.

Laurent wrote about the Game Pass changes—which include the price hikes rumored back in May, a new subscription tier, and the end of what has to be the most popular of the existing tiers—yesterday. Here, I’d like to step back and try to understand why Microsoft is making these changes and how (or whether) this rejiggered family of offerings could in any way align with its customers’ needs.

It used to be simple.

Microsoft positioned Xbox Game Pass Core as a modern evolution of Xbox Live Gold that built on that older offering’s key original features—online multiplayer with matchmaking on console—and addressed the end of the Games with Gold perk by adding a curated catalog of games. Game Pass Core was previously $59.99 per year, but this offering now costs $99.99 per year, a big percent increase, with no changes to the service at all.

Microsoft also offered Xbox Game Pass for Console and PC Game Pass—yes, inconsistently named as noted—for customers who want to access large game libraries for a monthly fee. These offerings have been nearly identical, with both getting new Microsoft Studio game releases on day one. The PC Game Pass library is much smaller than that for the console, and as such, Xbox Game Pass for Console was a bit more expensive each month, at $10.99, compared to $9.99 for PC Game Pass.

Incredibly, Microsoft is shutting down Xbox Game Pass for Consoles, the oldest and most popular of these offerings. It is replacing Xbox Game Pass for Consoles with something called Xbox Game Pass Standard that costs $14.99 per month—a 27 percent price hike—and provides the same console game library and other perks as its predecessor. But there is one major backward step, too: Where Xbox Game Pass for Console provided day-one access to all new Microsoft Studio game title releases, Xbox Game Pass Standard does not. Instead, subscribers will get some new Microsoft Studio titles sometime later; this is vague, and it’s not clear how long you’ll have to wait. In fact, some titles will never come to the library.

With PC Game Pass, only the price is changing: This subscription will now cost $11.99 per month, a 17 percent price increase.

For those who want it all, Microsoft also offered Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. As you would expect, this subscription combines Xbox Game Pass for Console with PC Game Pass, giving customers access to both game libraries. But it also offers other perks, like Xbox Cloud Gaming—the game streaming service originally called Project xCloud—and an EA Play subscription (which would otherwise cost $5 per month). Xbox Game Ultimate cost $16.99 per month until this week’s price increase. Now it costs $19.99 per month, a 15 percent increase.

Looked at broadly, there are two major changes here, and neither is positive.

First, and most obviously, is the price increases of 15 percent or more, depending on the tier. This is unwelcome, but it’s also straightforward.

Secondly, Microsoft is taking away one of the key benefits of its most popular Game Pass offering. Only those who pay for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will get new console-based Microsoft Studio titles on day one through their subscriptions. I assume this shift doesn’t impact PC Game Pass, but Microsoft’s documentation doesn’t address that.

That second change requires some explanation. But as it turns out, this, too, is straightforward, and it answers one of the biggest questions that came out of Microsoft’s blockbuster $68 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. How would Microsoft’s pledge to give all new Microsoft Studio games to Game Pass subscribers on day one continue to make sense once it subsumed Activision Blizzard? After all, Call of Duty alone generates billions of dollars in revenues every single year, and its fans typically spend $70 to $150 per year on just that one game. Microsoft couldn’t possibly sell enough Game Pass subscriptions at the previous price points to overcome the revenue deficit it would experience from just this one title.

The price hikes were thus inevitable. And perhaps we should view the removal of the day one perk from the newly renamed Xbox Game Pass Standard as another form of price hike: Those gamers who want to play new Call of Duty titles each year (or whatever other blockbuster new AAA titles) will need to pay for that separately from Game Pass. Which is what a lot of them were doing already, before the acquisition. So we might not like the answer, but Microsoft did finally address the question. (I feel like Game Pass subscribers should get a discount on new Microsoft Studio game purchases like this, and maybe they will. But that won’t stop the inevitable and maybe deserved griping about this change.)

What Microsoft hasn’t addressed is when Game Pass subscribers will gain access to Activision Blizzard’s mammoth libraries of catalog titles. We may or may not understand that we have to pay separately for the new Call of Duty title that’s coming later this year, but what about its many predecessors across console and PC? When are we getting those?

Microsoft isn’t saying. Indeed, it’s been quite on this topic all year, other than the one-off release of Diablo IV on Game Pass this past Spring. Microsoft has shipped more of its Studio titles on rival platforms this year than it’s shipped Activision games on Game Pass. That’s not just wild, it’s criminal, and Microsoft is senselessly punishing the platform’s biggest fans through this omission and its silence.

This makes me sad: The promise of Xbox is so good, and its gamer-focused strategy is so easily defended. But these changes make the platform suddenly feel directionless, as if no one thought through the impact of Activision Blizzard on Game Pass. At a time when Xbox should be doing a victory lap, we’re rocked by controversy after controversy and more questions than answers. Surely, this wasn’t how Microsoft envisioned year one with Activision Blizzard. It’s definitely not what its fans expected.