General Gaming News

[Mantis]

I wouldn't be surprised if the price jump will provide enough of a buffer that they will still have increased revenues despite losing a lot of subscribers. They had about 35 million subs last year so could afford to lose a good 10 million and still see a net gain, we're looking at over a 50% increase in the UK monthly price on Ultimate.

They definitely are seeing a swarm of unsubs though. I tried to get onto my Microsoft account earlier to turn off my recurring billing and the page wouldn't load for most of the day.

[Wrathbone]

I’ve only subscribed for one month in the last two years, to play Indiana Jones. At £23 a month, it’s now lost most of the appeal of subbing for a month to try a specific game, as I may as well just buy it instead.

I finally cancelled Netflix this week after 11 years of continuous subscription, now that my streaming server has all the series I watched regularly on there. I’d not paid attention to the price for ages - in the last five years it’s gone from £12 to £19. When I first signed up, it was £6. Balls to subscriptions from now on, wherever there’s an alternative.

[Alan]

Wasn’t worth it before unless you were unemployed or a kid with no responsibilities. Sure as hell ain’t worth it now!

[Achtung Englander]

The growing anger on the internet over this price increase is quite palpable. To be honest I don't blame them. Just look at the record. The Xbox Series console went from $500 at launch six years ago to $650 today with guess what...the same components!

Game Pass Ultimate went from $10 a month in 2017 to $20 in 2024 to $30 in 2025. What the fuck!

That means a gamer back in 2020 who bought an Xbox Series X console and took out 1 month subscription to the best tier for Game Pass would be $170 better off for exactly the same service.

[Wrathbone]

I think part of what's fuelling the backlash is that the price hike has come after a year of record Game Pass subscription revenue. Even if there is some genuine business rationale behind it (beyond "we would like all the money please"), the public isn't going to see it as anything other than rampant greed. Regardless of how Microsoft spin it, that's what looks and smells like.

Could be the final Xbox mismanagement debacle that puts the nail in the coffin for Xbox as a gaming platform. I hope not, but given that console sales have tanked and they've produced more controller skins than actual games in the Series era, I'm not sure what the point of Xbox is anymore, other than a name to stick on Game Pass.

[Animalmother]

Along with the fact that several retailers in the US will cease selling the Xbox once their current stocks run out.

[Raid]

I've felt that way about the XBox brand for a good while now. They've made some pretty laudable decisions in the last ten years - the move from console hardware exclusivity to releasing all first party titles on PC, pushing Sony to at least make moves towards doing the same, was a big deal. Game Pass was also an excellent deal for the first five or six years of the service, even after the first price hike.

But they just seem to be making PR disaster after PR disaster at the moment. The huge layoffs earlier this year, particularly at a studio that had made a very successful and critically acclaimed game, really irked me. And now they're continuing with this grubby-handedness by raising the Game Pass sub price substantially despite having a bumper year for income from it. They're not producing nearly enough quality titles to offset this; hell they cancelled the one title I was actually interested in (the new Perfect Dark, though we have since discovered that the game was barely more than a concept video so that maybe makes a little more sense now), so what do they have left? I don't really care for the Forza series anymore (and they cancelled the half of that franchise that I was remotely interested in), don't seem keen to develop any campaign content for Halo Infinite (I don't care about multiplayer stuff)... and.... I'm genuinely struggling to think of another XBox property that they didn't just buy from acquiring the publisher or developer.

I think Sony are the only real mainline console manufacturer these days. Nintendo don't seem to be suffering from the same mismanagement that Microsoft are, but the Switch 2 had little more than a hardware launch, with barely any software that wasn't just a patch for a Switch 1 title or a third-party title from 5 years ago.

[Animalmother]

I wonder if laying off thousands of game developers on a very regular basis is making it difficult to find people to actually make the games. Why work for a industry that thinks you're disposable.

[Mantis]

The cynic in me thinks that Game Pass was only ever such a good deal in the early days because they were trying to capture the market, like how Netflix did before they started putting the prices up once people were locked in.

They'd have probably got away with the nickle and diming if the increases had been a bit more modest and spread out over a few years so we eventually reached £23 in 2030 or something. But in the last couple of years it's sky rocketed from around £9 a month and that has made people re-evaluate whether they really need to be a part of that ecosystem.

The backlash online seems to be quite significant but then it's hard to know truly how many people are unsubscribing without Microsoft releasing the data, which they probably won't be too keen on if it's really damning. Personally I hope this tanks for them. Absolutely everything being a subscription with you owning nothing at all nowadays is just the worst model for the consumer, a wider spread cultural shift back towards single purchases and actual ownership (if you can call it that with licenced software) is hopefully on the cards.

[Rusty]

I'm one of those people that start things and never follow them up to get the best deals (I'm looking at you VirginMedia) but I'll be cancelling this after my October payment (as it's still the same price at the moment).

I'll be happy to buy anything that really takes my fancy.

[Achtung Englander]

I can understand where Mantis is coming from, but the difference with Game Pass is that all those games (with a few exceptions) can be bought and owned, albeit the digital copies, the license can be "bought".

TV subscription services have a lot of content that can neither be bought digitally or physically, which puts the consumer at a huge loss if they are interested in owning a show. Simply put - they can't. I can see why there is a growing resurgence in Blu Ray ownership among collectors.

"Everything digital" just SUCKS. Even the government is using technology against us with this idiotic Digital ID bullshit

[Wrathbone]

I can understand where Mantis is coming from, but the difference with Game Pass is that all those games (with a few exceptions) can be bought and owned, albeit the digital copies, the license can be "bought".

TV subscription services have a lot of content that can neither be bought digitally or physically, which puts the consumer at a huge loss if they are interested in owning a show. Simply put - they can't. I can see why there is a growing resurgence in Blu Ray ownership among collectors.

"Everything digital" just SUCKS. Even the government is using technology against us with this idiotic Digital ID bullshit

Agreed wholeheartedly. The power is with the consumer to drive the future of this, by spending money on things other than subscriptions, but I fear most people are too entrenched in those services now that media ownership will never be the mainstream again.

[Mantis]

I wasn't just referring to media content like movies, music and games either. Software companies dropping their perpetual licences for crap subscription models is probably even worse.

Thankfully most software has an alternative which works just as well or in some cases better, but the big players on each scene (like Microsoft and Adobe for example) moved over to subscriptions a while ago and what they offer for the price is just abysmal.

[Lenny Solidus]

And the Xbox branding never recovered.

There are some arguments to be had that Game Pass is still very much considerably great value even with the changes, how many conversations have most of us had over the years proclaiming that the service was never going to be sustainable, it was very much a get the most out of it possible while it's totally and quite blatantly not making anything at all just to pull in as many people as possible. It was only ever a matter of time so if anything though I'm not surprised at the backlash I'm too non-surprised that many are actually coming out in defense of the change considering just how good subscribers had it and for how long that goodness was taken advantage of that Microsoft in reality could have severely clamped down on bloody years ago. Everyone knew they could and rightly should have, they just never did until now. Like Epic and their own shit store, they were playing the long game and that lengthy period of what was purely too good to remain true is now over.

Conversely, I've only ever tried to use Game Pass a handful of times myself and had nothing but endless issues with it, so never reached a point in which I kept my subscription held firm because sweet fuck all ever did what I actually wanted it to.

[Animalmother]

I just dropped my subscription to the tier below. Its now cheaper and I can still play games online. You now have to wait a full year to get access to new games but MS have nothing in the tubes so it's no loss.

I've seen it speculated that this is now the future of all MS products including Windows. Key features locked behind a paywall and no updates.