The Xbox gamers who suffered at the hands of Microsoft’s Game Pass price hike in October last year may want to cover their eyes for this one. Xbox, in its infinite wisdom, hopes to dig itself out of the trench it’s currently bleeding out in by adding even more services under the Game Pass Ultimate umbrella.
Riding the Game Pass gravy train
On the surface, that sounds like a pretty good idea. The news hasn’t come from Xbox, but rather The Verge’s Tom Warren, who heard through the grapevine that Microsoft is considering ways to bundle third-party services with Game Pass subscriptions and “potentially even merge Xbox Game Pass Premium and PC Game Pass”.
That’s where Warren left it. It wasn’t long before Windows Central’s Jez Corden weighed in on the change, claiming that Microsoft wants to bundle in stuff like a World of Warcraft sub, Minecraft Realms, and even the $15/m premium fee for The Elder Scrolls Online. For folks footing all those bills separately, that R350/m price doesn’t actually look so bad. Don’t forget, Xbox is rather good at adding its games to the service on day one.
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No, it’s what comes after that scares us most. If Microsoft is willing to run hikes without any obvious value add-ons, imagine what it’ll do once it’s ready to add multiple. The hikes may not be immediately apparent — Microsoft’s ditch is rather deep right now — but somewhere down the line, customers may be forced to eat the biscuit.
Of course, this is all hearsay until Microsoft makes a move publicly. Warren reckons we likely won’t see any major movement on the Game Pass front until 2027, at the earliest. For now, customers will have to put up with the R350/m fee for the Ultimate tier and all of its current perks as is.
