Following a whiplash-inducing 50-percent price hike for Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass and the Xbox brand overall are in a funky place. That nauseating price increase is likely the loudest adjustment being made to the once-decent Game Pass subscription service, but it’s far from the only one. Old tiers have been overhauled and renamed, with tighter restrictions on when you can access certain games and how many of them you’ll have access to, and the discounts and deals subscribers once enjoyed are but ash scattered to the wind.
While the Ultimate plan now has a few more features than it once did, the sting of paying 50 percent extra has caused serious damage to the Xbox brand, with progressive lawmakers saying “told ya so” after Microsoft gobbled up a bunch of studios and publishers. This is all going down while rumors of an ad-supported version of Xbox Game Streaming are swimming around. That last point shouldn’t be surprising as Xbox consoles have routinely been home to various ads taking up your full screen on boot.
As is customary for the first quarter of the 21st century, we’re all quoting comrade Doctorow in response to these wild changes. But in case you’re looking to shrug off that late-stage-capitalism ennui with some gaming on Xbox, let’s break down what Game Pass now costs, and how you can still get it for pre-hike prices, for now.
Following last week’s changes, Xbox Game Pass presently offers three tiers:
All of these tiers let you play online multiplayer on Xbox, though the number of games available and when you get access to them varies. Essential and Premium don’t offer day-one access for new Xbox games. Premium, however, lets you play recently released Xbox titles “within 12 months of launch.” Ultimate (which will run you a ridiculous $360/year if you hang on to your sub all year) grants you the most games with the fastest access: Day-one availability on first- and third-party games, plus all the games in EA Play and Ubisoft+ Classics.
You can check out the full details on Xbox’s site, but it’s clear that Game Pass isn’t only more expensive than it once was, it’s also become far more complicated than just throwing a modest sum of money at Microsoft per month to be sure you can play the new Gears or COD at launch.
There’s also a PC-only plan for $16.49/month which promises day-one availability of Xbox-published games, as well as some third-party ones. It also includes EA Play.
There’s a select group of Game Pass subscribers who will be happy to know they just dodged a bullet (for now, anyway). As confirmed by our comrades over at Polygon, if you are presently subscribed to the now-phased-out Game Pass for Console and automatic payment is still set up and functioning, you will be grandfathered in with all of the benefits of the old subscription.
Should you cancel payments, however, you’ll lose access to that retired plan and will need to choose among the three poison pills of a service Microsoft is selling you. Checking which plan you have is as simple as logging in to Game Pass’ website, clicking on “My Microsoft Account” and checking what active subscriptions you currently have.
In an unlikely turn of events, GameStop of all companies has lol’d at Xbox by continuing to sell Ultimate subscriptions for just $20/month. It may be worth checking out other retailers, probably in brick and mortar stores, to see if you can snag a subscription card for a cheaper price as well.
One of the cooler things about the Game Pass of Old™ was that you’d regularly get access to exclusive discounts on games and DLC. That’s obviously no longer in Microsoft’s interests to offer you as Microsoft has confirmed to IGN that instead of getting a 10-percent discount on DLC, you’ll now just earn more Rewards.
“Rewards” are a non-Xbox-exclusive program that basically lets you earn money to spend on various Microsoft products. You can earn points otherwise by browsing the web with Bing while using Microsoft Edge (lol what are we doing here, ya’ll?), and now by playing games with an active Game Pass subscription.
If that sounds confusing, I regret to inform you that it’s probably that way by design. Essential will net you up to $25 in rewards per year, Premium allows for up to $50, and Ultimate will let you earn up to $100. You can read all of the nitty gritty details about the Microsoft Rewards program here.
Pricier subs, the death of discounts, it all sounds painful and it is! That might have you wondering what’s going on with other subscription services, especially if you value an ongoing service over just straight-up purchasing and owning your games.
PlayStation has a similar three-tier structure (no options for PC gamers though). The most costly version of these will only cost you $160 for the full year, which is a full $200 less than what Xbox is charging for Ultimate. The most basic version of its subscription service will only cost you $80/year, but it doesn’t come with a game catalog. You’ll need to buy the middle-tier option at a minimum for that, which will run you $15/month or $135/year.
Meanwhile, Nintendo has two subscription services but doesn’t offer any Switch games via a Netflix-style, download-on-demand service. Its most basic service costs $20/year, lets you play online among other benefits, and lets you play from a library of NES, SNES, and Game Boy games whenever you want. At $50/year, a pricier tier expands that retro library to include select GameCube, GBA, N64, and Sega Genesis games (yes, really!).
I put ‘own’ in quotes there because, especially on PC, there’s debate as to whether or not our Steam libraries (or any digital library) is made up of the games themselves, or is just a collection of licenses granting us access to the games. (There’s always GOG if you want to be sure you’ll just get straight up .exe files of your games, though it is a more limited collection.) But that argument aside, if you plunk down $60-70 bucks to snag a new game that doesn’t have a perpetual monetization scheme baked into it, you will continue to have access to that game without needing a corporation to charge you every month.
Maybe you’ll have a smaller library of games available to you at any given moment, but at least they’ll be yours. Period. Consider it.
Subscriptions make sense for many folks, no doubt. But having direct access to your games keeps you away from these kinds of shenanigans, and I shudder to think there’s a generation of gamers growing up right now that think more about getting an Ultimate Game Pass card for their birthdays or holidays than an actual copy, digital or physical, of a game that they’ll own for the foreseeable future.
