Xbox are making big changes to Game Pass, including price increases
Xbox have announced that Game Pass is changing, with the names of plans and offerings all shifting around, in the hopes of making things easier for gamers to understand. The video below will give you an idea of the changes.
Just so you know what things are currently, across PC and Console there are four plans:
Core
Standard
PC
Ultimate
Core and Standard are exclusive to console and PC is, uh exclusive to PC. Ultimate provides both PC and console offerings.
As far as prices goes, this is what they were and what they offered for console players:
These are the plans that PC players could enjoy:
As you can see, only PC and Ultimate offered new games on Day One, like the upcoming Outer Worlds 2. But all that is changing, because the plans are stripping down to some more basic offerings, here are the new tiers and names.
Core > Essential
Standard > Premium
Ultimate = Ultimate
PC = PC
Here are the new plans with their updated names:
As you can see the names are new, the offerings are modified and the prices have increased. So, what has changed?
Essential
Price: $12.95 per month (an increase of $2 per month)
New Benefits:
50+ games on Xbox console and PC (Up from 25 only on console)
Stream games, including select games you already own
Play and earn up to 25,000 Rewards points a year in the Store with Rewards
Benefits for games like League of Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone
Premium
Price: $17.95 per month (an increase of $2 per month)
New Benefits:
New Xbox published games join the library within 12 months of launch - excludes Call of Duty games
Stream games with shorter wait times, including select games you own
Play and earn up to 50,000 Rewards points a year in the Store with Rewards
Benefits for games like League of Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone
PC
Price: $19.45 per month (an increase of $5.50 per month)
New Benefits:
Play and earn up to 50,000 Rewards points a year in the Store with Rewards
Benefits for games like League of Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone
Ultimate
Price: $35.95 per month (an increase of $13 per month)
New Benefits:
Ubisoft+ Classics
Stream games at our best quality with the shortest wait times, including select games you own
Play and earn up to 100,000 Rewards points a year in the Store with Rewards
Benefits for games like League of Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone
One of the big things in the new plans, excluding PC is that the streaming of games is changing. Basically if you want to stream your own games, or others from the Game Pass library, the Ultimate tier will give you the shortest wait and best quality. Which is a big change from how it is now, as there is generally no waits, but on the newer cheaper tiers you will have to wait.
The new tiers, Essential and Premium now include PC as an option, so while existing PC only players can drop down to the Essential tier to save a few dollars a month, there is now less games available. The EA Play membership is only available to Ultimate and PC specific plans too.
Speaking of extra games, Ultimate now includes Ubisoft+ Classics, which is where you can enjoy older Ubisoft titles, like Far Cry, Zombi and Assassin’s Creed II.
Now if all of this just sounds like things being changed for the sake of change, you are 100% correct, what makes it bad though is that this is the second time the Ultimate Plan has seen a price increase, as it went up in September 2024. Back then the price was $18.95, which now makes the $35.95 almost double that and apart from game streaming, which not everyone cares about, the only significant change is Ubisoft+ Classics being added.
If these price increases are just too much for your wallet, you are not alone, you can cancel your Game Pass membership here.
