Another Xbox Game Pass Price Increase May Be Coming Soon

It sounds like another Xbox Game Pass price increase is coming soon. Last year, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate got a massive price increase, bringing it from $20 to $30 a month. There are cheaper tiers than this, like PC Game Pass, which costs $16.49 a month. Meanwhile, Xbox Game Pass Premium and Essential tiers cost $14.99 and $9.99 a month, respectively. Ultimate tier is the most popular tier, though, and so the huge price increase was a gut punch for subscribers. And it looks like the price increases may not be over.

According to a new report from Tom Warren, a well-known and reliable Xbox insider, Microsoft is looking to “expand” Xbox Game Pass in 2026. To do this, it is looking at bundling other services into the subscription service, like it has done in the past with EA Play. Of course, this — along with rising development costs, inflation, and the very expensive Activision-Blizzard acquisition — is a key contributor to price increases in the past. To this end, Microsoft is not going to expand the subscription service for free. Rather, it is going to use it as an opportunity to increase prices.

Xbox Game Pass Becoming Like Cable TV

If this strategy sounds familiar, it is because it is what cable TV did for years. It bundled in a bunch of things you didn’t want and made you pay a premium for it. Of course, this proved ultimately to be an unviable strategy and a very unpopular one as well, so it is unclear why Microsoft would go this route unless it is desperate to increase the price of the subscription service, presumably to make up for the lack of subscription growth. That said, the price increase to $30 has proven a breaking point for many, so it’s hard to imagine subscribers being willing to pay more than this, at least anytime soon.

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Game Pass PC and Premium Merger

The report also mentions that Microsoft is looking into merging the Xbox Game Pass Premium and PC Game Pass tiers into one tier, which would no doubt come with a price increase. This is presumably because Xbox Game Pass Premium has an insufficient number of subscribers, and Microsoft can tack it onto the more popular PC Game Pass tier, while getting said subscribers to pay more.

Of course, take all of this new, unofficial information for what it is: unofficial information. In other words, take it with a grain of salt. So far, it has not drawn out Microsoft for comment, and we do not expect this to change. If it does, though, we will update the story accordingly. In the meantime, and as always, feel free to leave a comment or two letting us know what you think, or join the conversation over on the ComicBook Forum.