Xbox lost 'millions' of Game Pass subscribers after last year's massive price hike
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This would explain why Asha Sharma moved so quickly to lower them.
Microsoft recently reversed the sky-high Game Pass price increases it imposed in 2025, bringing them down to not quite where they were prior, but close enough to quell at least some of the complaints. The move came not long after Xbox CEO Asha Sharma admitted the prices were too high—but it sounds like the impact of those hiked-up prices was perhaps even bigger than most of us expected.
Matthew Ball, games industry analyst and newly-installed Xbox chief strategy officer, said during a Summer Game Fest interview with Game Business Live, reported by GameSpot, that Game Pass lost "millions" of subscribers over the months after the October 2025 price increase, which saw the top-end Game Pass Ultimate go up by 50%, from $19.99 to $29.99 per month.
Losses on that scale would certainly explain why Sharma prioritized the Game Pass price reduction. That cut came with a cost of its own—Call of Duty games will no longer be available on Game Pass at launch, but will instead be added about a year after they launch—but this seems to be one of those cases where the bottom-line number at checkout time is what matters, as the price cut had a positive impact almost immediately: In May, just a month after the reduction was announced, Sharma said that "we have seen [Game Pass] acquisitions grow and retention improve"—not a complete turnaround, but "a good first step."
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Ball repeated that sentiment, saying the price cut—Game Pass Ultimate is now $22.99, still an increase but not nearly so jarring—is "resonating" with gamers.
The Game Pass price cut is just one part of a broader effort to turn things around at Xbox: While Sharma's tenure at the head of Xbox was initially expected by some to be brief and terminal—Seamus Blackley predicted she was brought in as "a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night," although he later seemed to change his mind—recent moves like the Game Pass price cut and return to console exclusives point to a concerted effort to put Microsoft's console business back on competitive footing. Whether it pays off remains to be seen, and a lot of it so far seems to be nostalgia over substance, but the fact that it's happening at all is notable entirely on its own.
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