Xbox Game Pass January Additions Include Diablo and UFC

We’re officially one week into the month of January, and Xbox Game Pass has now pulled back the curtain on its new releases for the first half of the month. We’ve known about the arrival of Road 96 for more than a month now, and it will be available on Xbox Game Pass standard starting today. However, there are a bunch more games to expect over the next week or so, the majority of which will be available through the standard tier. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will have one game of their own, while PC Game Pass subscribers have a pretty big addition. The full list can be found below:

• January 7th- Road 96 (Console, PC, Cloud) through Game Pass Standard
• January 8th- Lightyear Frontier Game Preview (Xbox Series X|S) through Game Pass Standard
• January 8th- My Time at Sandrock (Console) through Game Pass Standard
• January 8th- Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders (Xbox Series X|S) through Game Pass Standard
• January 8th- Rolling Hills (Console), through Game Pass Standard
• January 14th- EA Sports UFC 5 (Xbox Series X|S, Cloud) through Game Pass Ultimate
• January 14th- Diablo (PC) through Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass

So far, this list has resulted in a collective yawn from Xbox Game Pass subscribers. All of the games that are being added to the standard tier are currently available on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, so for those that subscribe to the higher price version of the service, UFC 5 is the only actual new announcement for consoles. It’s possible the second half of the month will have a lot more to celebrate, but for the time being, subscribers can’t be blamed for feeling less than enthused.

The weak January lineup for Xbox Game Pass is all the more glaring when you consider the number of games that are leaving the service next week. As revealed earlier this month, six games will be removed from the service on January 16th, with the biggest one being Capcom’s Exoprimal. EA Play will also be removing at least two more games in the month of February, when Madden NFL 23 and F1 22 are both dropped from Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

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While the “new” Xbox Game Pass titles aren’t anything to write home about, and we’ve got a bunch of games leaving the service, it’s not all bad news. Today will see the debut of the revamped Xbox Game Pass Quests. Improvements have been made to Quests to make them more streamlined, and there have been changes made to which users can access them. PC Game Pass subscribers will now be able to take advantage of Quests, and earn points towards Xbox gift cards. However, users under the age of 18 on both console and PC will no longer be able to access Quests, following these changes.

How do you feel about the additions to Xbox Game Pass in January? Are you disappointed by the current lineup for the month? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp, on Bluesky at @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!