Xbox Game Pass Price Dropped
Share the Story:
What goes up, Must come down
Microsoft new Xbox Leader Asha Sharma, has started making big changes to the shrinking console brand. Fresh on the push forward with their Next Gen PC cum console in Project Helix earlier this year. And after only a few month ago bumping Game Pass subscriptions, by up to 50%, they have seen that prices are too high, as I noted in my Game Pass deep dive last year would happen. So, they are dropping the price back down across many regions effective from today.
In the UK for example, PC Game Pass and Ultimate are cut back from £13.49 to £10.99 and from £22.99 to £16.99 a month respectivly. The Essential basic package remains unchaged at £6.99 p/m. The United States also gets a price cut across its big hitting, and clearly most reduced, tiers. Game Pass Ultimate recudes from $29.99 to $22.99 and the PC Tier drops to $13.99 from its previous $16.49 price.
Money Talks
The reasons for this are clear, the market has reacted to the reduced confidence of the Xbox team to deliver games. But also the huge impact to the brand itself that has come from Microsoft themselves, makeing self destructive decisions on their market place, loyal userbase, and the errosion of value and trust. But more importantly, it is due to the severe impact in the pocket this has made to Game Pass subscriptions, both on PC and consoles. And by lowering the price they hope to claw back more subscribers rather than trying to squeeze more from those that remain. And this is a good decision by Asha, as it will help them gain a little good news if they continue to release games ahead of their new PC Focused platform next year.
The Xbox team have been building up more games as they have shifted focus to a 3rd Party Publisher future, and Game Pass is likely going to continue to play a part in their longer term strategy. With all games launching across Xbox consoles, PC platform, and even the PS5 and likely Nintendo Switch 2. The Game Pass subscription is needed for the Xbox players that have been taught, by Microsoft’s own actions, to not buy games but rent them. Hence withouth Game Pass being good value and a further revenue stream, the Xbox future, as a hardware platform, is likely not going to be a long one.
