Xbox substantially raised Game Pass prices in October 2025, a price hike that cost Microsoft millions of players, according to Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball. He spoke at Summer Game Fest’s The Game Business Live event on Monday and shared insights into the business side of Game Pass.
“We shed millions of subscribers over the span of a few months,” Ball said (via GameSpot). Game Pass Ultimate, the highest tier of Game Pass, went from $19.99 to $29.99 per month, and the price change was too much for plenty of players. Xbox Game Pass had over 34 million players as of February 2024, the latest confirmed number, and Xbox hasn’t shared the current Game Pass subscriber count.
In the months since the price increase, under new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, Ball said Xbox has “corrected that offering.” Sharma had admitted Game Pass became “too expensive for players” in a memo leaked in April 2026, and later in the month Xbox dropped prices. Now, Game Pass Ultimate costs $22.99 a month — still more expensive than the $19.99 pre-price hike, but much more palatable than the previous $29.99 price. A cheaper, pared-down version was also announced in May as part of Xbox’s partnership with Discord.
Xbox is trying to win back players not just with a cheaper Game Pass, but with more exclusive games. After dabbling in releasing its IP on other consoles — hello, Master Chief on PlayStation 5 — Xbox is reevaluating its approach to exclusive games.
“Players can expect a reliable pipeline that validates their historical investment in the Xbox platform, keeps them as Xbox players going forward. And everyone in the industry understands that exclusives are important to the growth and branding of that platform,” Ball said at The Game Business Live event (via VGC).
However, after Sunday’s Xbox Games Showcase, Xbox’s emphasis on exclusive games feels more like a PR stunt for the time being. Time will tell if courting the most hardcore players back with early-2000s console war rhetoric will win back those who fled less than a year ago, let alone the newcomers the company needs to survive generational shift.
An interesting time! At least there are some legitimately good games on Game Pass.
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