Game Pass success story: It turns out that when you make things cheaper, more people will buy them
Overview & Key Takeaways
Who could've guessed?
Sometimes, if you want people to buy more of something, lowering the price can be an effective way of making it happen. You might already be familiar with that theory of economics but for those who are not, a real life example: In an internal memo shared with The Verge, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said lowering the price of Game Pass seems to be working out pretty well.
Sharma said in April that Xbox needed "a better value equation" on Game Pass, the price of which had jumped significantly in October 2025: The top-tier Game Pass Ultimate saw a 50% hike, from $19.99 to $29.99 per month. A week after Sharma's declaration, those prices were reduced: They stayed higher than they were prior to that October 2025 increase (Game Pass Ultimate went down to $22.99 per month, for example), and there was a cost: Call of Duty games will no longer be available on Game Pass at launch, but will instead be added about a year later—so, about the time that the next annual CoD shows up.
But it seems that the bottom-line price tag is more important to some sizable chunk of the Game Pass audience. "Growth slowed down and subscriber loss accelerated after the pricing and SKU changes last year," Sharma said in the memo. "Since our price reduction we have seen acquisitions grow and retention improve, which is a good first step."
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And it is, apparently, just a first step: "We will not solve this in one moment or one launch," Sharma continued. "We will have to outwork the problem in front of us in our path to restore durable growth."
I don't think there's any question that Game Pass had grown too expensive for a large portion of the Xbox base. $360 a year isn't a huge amount of money and probably still a good deal overall for die-hards who are powering through multiple new releases per month, but for more casual folks who get into maybe a half-dozen games a year, it starts to look like maybe a bigger commitment than they need—and that says nothing about the damage 360 bucks can do in a good Steam sale.
It remains to be seen where Game Pass goes from here, but I think cut the price and call it done is unlikely. One distinct possibility is a greater emphasis on ads: Rumors of an ad-supported Xbox Cloud Gaming service surfaced not long after the Game Pass price hikes, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see something similar toyed with on Game Pass itself.
Sharma also mentioned the recent rebranding of Xbox to XBOX, saying it "reflects a decision to be deliberate in how we show up for the players who care most about this brand." As you may have noticed, we will not be taking part in that particular exercise.
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