The news of Xbox’s overhaul of Game Pass has gone down about as well as you’d expect, with the cancellation webpage crashing from overuse.
On Wednesday, Microsoft announced a major overhaul for Xbox Game Pass, reworking all of its tiers and raising the price of Game Pass Ultimate by 50% to £22.99 a year.
Online reactions proved positive overall, with many subscribers welcoming the changes and saying they’re more than happy to pay extra for such a high value service.
Oh wait, no, that’s not what’s happened…. The exact opposite, in fact, with Xbox owners everywhere lambasting Microsoft’s decision and encouraging everyone to cancel their subscriptions, so they can spend money elsewhere.
Over on the official Xbox Game Pass X account, we struggled to find any comments expressing anything other than indignation, frustration, or simple confusion regarding the price increase.
‘After being a long time Xbox player since the 360…I’ll stay on PS5,’ says one Frank the Tank.
‘I’ve been playing Xbox since 2007 and you’ve never asked me ONCE for my feedback about this. So here it is: This sucks,’ adds Jon Handy Dandy, calling Microsoft ‘tone deaf.’
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Jestýr The Lesser offers a more positive spin, pointing out that any money saved from cancelling a Game Pass subscription can go towards investing in a Steam Deck instead.
Things are no better on Bluesky, with people declaring they’ve already cancelled their subscriptions. One Ashley Cooper, a writer on EA’s upcoming Iron Man game, outright calls Game Pass ‘cooked.’
Elsewhere, pale blue pixel predicts that this is what will ‘tank the Xbox business’ since ‘there’s no affordable day one access, no exclusives, no affordable console, and no reason to be part of the ecosystem.’
It’s not just normal gamers who’ve weighed in on the matter, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella has shared the results of a survey from earlier in the year that quizzed US customers on why they cancelled their Game Pass subscriptions, and the most common answers were pricing related. So, people were already struggling to justify paying for the service.
You’ll also find no shortage of jokes at Microsoft’s expense, such as this perfect usage of a Simpsons meme from GamesRadar editor Rollin Bishop and this comment by Nicky Flowers: ‘Xbox Game Pass costs $360 a year because you see that price, turn 360 degrees, and walk away.’
All this has only contributed to a general sense that there’s no point in supporting not just Xbox consoles, but the entire Xbox ecosystem. At the time of writing, the top post on the Xbox subreddit, with about 5,500 upvotes, simply asks ‘What’s the point of buying anything Xbox-related again?’
‘I just don’t get it. It went from ‘Xbox is the best value’ to everything is more expensive than the competition,’ says Redditor mashdpotatogaming, ‘There’s no way Xbox as a brand is lasting long. Buying anything Xbox related right now is shooting yourself in the foot.’
The top comment by sickened88 is a very blunt ‘Guess I’m back to buying games,’ which appears to be a popular sentiment if the 1,400 upvotes is anything to go by.
‘Just spent $30 on multiple single-player games on the Steam sale. A minimum of six months added to my backlog,’ adds lIlIllIlIlIII, ‘The way things are going I genuinely don’t want to gamble buying games on Xbox anymore. 10 years from now my library could be non-existent because some future financial crisis and a bad leadership decision decimates Xbox.’
Others are vowing that the Xbox Series X console will be their last from Microsoft, with no intentions of supporting Microsoft’s future hardware plans. One is even considering cancelling their pre-order for the ROG Xbox Ally handheld: ‘Why give my money to a company that is so hostile to its users?’
‘This is the first year in the last decade at least where I felt it paid off being an Xbox guy,’ writes a depressed sounding pokemongotothepolls. ‘We got a lot of great Game Pass games like Expedition 33 and Silksong. But even great new games every year won’t be worth this insane price. And they couldn’t even finish the year strong without pulling some BS like this. It’s joever.’
The move proved so unpopular Microsoft’s webpage for cancelling Game Pass subscriptions went down on Wednesday due to overloading. It seems to be fixed now, but it goes to show how unpopular the overhaul has been.
It’s far too soon to tell if this will truly be the death knell for Xbox, especially when some hardcore fans said they’d ditch it after it began porting its exclusives to PlayStation 5.
What’s especially ironic is that Microsoft clearly wants to triple down on Game Pass because nobody is buying its consoles. One of the service’s big selling points is that it’s no longer gated to Xbox hardware. That’s the whole purpose of the ‘This is an Xbox’ marketing.
But making Game Pass more widely accessible won’t matter if people don’t think it offers enough value, especially when both Sony and Nintendo’s online services are cheaper by comparison.
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