I’ve been a pretty big supporter of Xbox Game Pass (and PC Game Pass) since the service launched a few years ago, and I’ve been a subscriber to the PC version from almost the first moment it became available. I love the idea: a huge library of games, all available for one monthly price. As someone on a low income (and as someone who remembers what it was like to be a kid with only a few pennies to spend on gaming), Game Pass has been genuinely great value; an easy route into current-gen gaming for players on a budget.
What’s more, I’ve discovered games that I’d never have thought to buy or try for myself, thanks entirely to Game Pass. Some of those games – like Little Kitty, Big City last year and South of Midnight just a couple of months ago – are genuinely among the best titles I’ve played in the 2020s, and it’s only because of Game Pass that I was able to try them and enjoy them.
But unless Microsoft changes course, it’s time to cancel Game Pass.
I play on PC, not console. The PC version of Game Pass, just over a year ago, went up in price from £7.99 here in the UK to £9.99 – a hike of 25%. That already felt a bit steep, but since I don’t have many other subscriptions, I begrudgingly accepted it. £10 a month still felt like reasonably good value for what I was getting from Game Pass; play two full-priced games a year, or four £30, double-A games, and it’s paid for itself. Right?
If you weren’t already aware, Microsoft has come back, not twelve months after the last price hike, and they’re doing it again. The PC version of Game Pass is rising from £9.99 to £13.49: a 35% increase on top of last year’s 25% increase. And that isn’t even the worst or most egregious price rise: the “Ultimate” Game Pass plan is rising by more than 50%, from £14.99 to a whopping £22.99 a month. At these prices… Game Pass no longer feels like a good value offer, unfortunately.
And I really do say this with regret. Not only has Game Pass felt like a good value prospect until now, but it’s introduced me to some genuinely wonderful gaming experiences that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Being able to log into the app, scroll through a huge list of titles, and see what leaps out at me has felt fantastic, and as I’ve said more than once: Game Pass has opened up a huge library of titles; more games than I’d ever be able to afford. When it was £7.99 – and even after last year’s significant rise to £9.99 – it felt like a good deal.
But I can’t accept the price of a single subscription rising by almost 70% in just thirteen months. And at £13.49 a month – or £162 a year – it’s become impossible to justify. There just aren’t that many games on the service that I’d want to play – and some, like RoadCraft, aren’t available on the PC version of Game Pass, for some reason. So… I think I’m done with Game Pass for now, unless Microsoft apologises and reverses this price hike.
I’ve believed for a long time that the subscription model would be the future of gaming. Just like Netflix did for films and TV programmes, and Spotify and others have done for music, something like Game Pass should be able to do for video games. Gaming is basically all-digital these days anyway, and the audience skews younger and more tech-savvy. A reasonably-priced subscription service – like Game Pass used to be – represents a genuinely good value proposition, an easy route into gaming, and should be the wave of the future. Compared to buying individual titles outright, either physically or digitally, a subscription which opens up a library of hundreds of titles should seem like good value.
But Microsoft is fucking it up.
Not only are the prices going up, but on the lower “tiers,” Microsoft is making Game Pass worse. No longer will all Xbox-published games join the service on day one. If you’re on an Xbox console, the only way you’ll get that particular perk is if you pay for Game Pass Ultimate, and if you’re on PC, the only way to get it is through the PC-only tier, for £13.49 a month. If you pay less, you don’t get those brand-new titles on day one, but “within a year.” That’s already a massive downgrade. Oh, and the venerable Call of Duty series? Those games aren’t included on day one any more.
So… the price is going up. Unless you pay for the top-tier plan, you won’t get new games on day one. And the most popular series that Microsoft currently owns may not be part of Game Pass on day one even if you do pay the premium price. So… what’s the point of Game Pass, then?
Microsoft, like all big corporations, has to disclose its financial records. And in the twelve months leading up to June 2025 (the most recent data at time of writing), Microsoft made US$193 billion in profit. That represented a 14% increase over the previous twelve months. Compared with quite a few other big companies in the gaming space, whose profits have been relatively static since the end of lockdown, Microsoft has been doing phenomenally well. And the Xbox brand is a big part of that.
Slides: Microsoft’s July 2025 Earnings Call.
Microsoft made more money last year than it has ever made before in its entire corporate existence. For the corporation to then turn around and announce price hikes of 50% – or, really, what is effectively 70% on PC – is just sickening. It’s beyond greedy, and even if a thousand new games were being added to the Game Pass library… it still wouldn’t be right. But Game Pass, as far as I can tell, is not actually getting a major expansion or much additional content that could even come close to justifying a price hike of this nature.
So… I’m gonna cancel. And I would encourage other folks in the same boat as me to do the same.
If Microsoft is willing to walk this back – and apologise – then maybe I’ll reconsider, because I have genuinely enjoyed having Game Pass over the last few years. But at this new price, it’s not worth it for me, and I could use my £162 a year in other ways – like buying games when they go on sale on Steam or Epic Games, for instance. I really did think that subscriptions are the direction of travel for gaming… but not like this.
This is a catastrophic own goal from Microsoft that the corporation simply did not need to make. Game Pass has been profitable for a while, and even as the Xbox brand has struggled over the last couple of console generations, the growth in PC gaming, coupled with Game Pass, has seen Microsoft’s gaming division land on its feet. But increasing the price of a subscription by 70% in thirteen months is not something any consumer can or should accept – not when the corporation behind the price hike is making hundreds of billions of dollars a year – and still laying off boatloads of workers and closing game studios.
Maybe Microsoft wants to get out of the gaming market, and these moves are designed to push people away. Or maybe they really think they can just get away with it and that folks will brush off these inexplicably large price hikes. Maybe some people will – but if it’s true, as has been reported, that so many people are rushing to cancel their subscriptions that the Game Pass website crashed… I suspect a re-think of this price structure may be in order.
In any case, I’m cancelling this month, and unless Microsoft apologises and changes course, I won’t be rejoining Game Pass any time soon. I’m genuinely disappointed about that, because the subscription has been great until now (even though the Xbox app on PC isn’t spectacular). But this price hike is too much, so I’m going to do the only thing I can do as a consumer in this marketplace: vote with my wallet.
The Game Pass subscription service is available now for players on PC and Xbox game consoles. All titles discussed above are the copyright of their respective developer, publisher, and/or studio. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 