Yahoo News Xbox Game Pass to Increase Price, Limit Day-One Releases to Most Expensive Tier
Microsoft Gaming is increasing the price of its subscription service Xbox Game Pass across multiple tiers worldwide, and simultaneously limiting its day-one releases to only the most expensive version of the offering.
As of Wednesday, Xbox’s Game Pass “Ultimate” level will raise its price by $3 per month in the U.S., going from $16.99 to $19.99 for new customers. The “Core” tier will rise from $59.99 for the 12-month pass up to $69.99 for the annual fee.
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Beginning Sept. 12, the price will change for existing members on their next recurring billing charge.
A new Game Pass “Standard” plan will be launching soon, per Xbox, offering more features than Core, but fewer than the Ultimate tier.
For PC, new users will now pay $11.99 per month for Game Pass access, an increase from the previous price at $9.99.
While Game Pass for Console will no longer be available for new members, those who are already subscriber and have autopay enabled will continue to have access.
Along with these price changes, Xbox has also decided to only include day-one releases of its upcoming games, including “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6,” with its Ultimate plan. Other features limited to that tier include EA Play membership, Cloud gaming on multiple devices and free monthly “perks” from Microsoft.
The Ultimate and Standard versions will both offer “hundreds” of games, while Core will only have 25+ titles, per Xbox.
Microsoft Gaming’s decision to increase the price for Game Pass and limit the features of its cheaper plans comes on the heels of Xbox Games Showcase in June, where it revealed several upcoming games and a big push to get those new games to Game Pass subscribers on release day, last week’s Xbox Live outage, and this week’s launch of the Xbox app on some Amazon Fire TV devices.
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