This was in response to the Xbox profile announcing that cloud gaming had arrived in India alongside expansions to servers in Brazil and Argentina. Spencer said, “One way we measure progress is by looking at engagement, and the momentum is encouraging: Game Pass cloud hours are up 45 percent compared to this time last year, and console players are streaming 45 percent more on console and 24 percent more on other devices. “

Which sounds all well and good, but how many were utilizing Xbox Cloud Gaming to begin with? How much time were they originally spending? These are currently unknown. Nevertheless, Spencer felt that “Progress is also about more choice for players—play what you want, where you want—and that’s what drives us forward.”

It’s also worth noting that cloud gaming is available to a wider spectrum of Game Pass subscribers than before. Previously exclusive to Game Pass Ultimate, Premium and Essential can now access the same, albeit at lower quality and slightly longer wait times. Microsoft is also working on a free cloud gaming tier supported by ads, though it has yet to provide specifics.

In its statement, Microsoft has clarified that Game Pass Ultimate subscribers would get 10 percent of the value of a game or its DLC in reward points. Game Pass Premium subscribers would similarly get 5 percent of the value in points. Along with this, not all discounts are going away. Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will continue to see 20 percent discounts on some games available on the service.

“This is not specific to any one game and reflects all games and DLC purchases,” said Microsoft in its statement. “Instead of a discount on the purchases, Ultimate and Premium subscribers will earn 10% and 5% — respectively — in points when purchasing select games and add-ons from the Game Pass library. Ultimate members continue to have 20% discount on select games from the Game Pass library.“

“On top of that, all Rewards members will earn points when shopping games and add-ons on the Store, while Premium and Ultimate subscribers will earn even more, 2x and 4x respectively. See more detail on the Game Pass Rewards program here.”

On the official website for the Game Pass Rewards program, Microsoft has noted that Premium subscribers can earn a maximum of $50 worth of reward points in a single year, while Ultimate subscribers can earn up to $100 worth of points. These points can be spent on a variety of things, like Xbox Gift Cards or getting entry in to a sweepstake. There will soon also be a way to spent the points to to supplement real-world money when purchasing a game through Microsoft Store.

Microsoft has been seeing quite a bit of criticism with its recent move of making subscriptions to Game Pass Ultimate more expensive. Recently, even former head of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) – Lina Khan – spoke out against the company, calling it “too-big-to-care” in its move to raise the prices.

“Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been followed by significant price hikes and layoffs, harming both gamers and developers,” wrote Khan. “As we’ve seen across sectors, increasing market consolidation and increasing prices often go hand-in-hand. As dominant firms become too-big-to-care, they can make things worse for their customers without having to worry about the consequences.”

The new tiers for Game Pass are Essential, Premium and Ultimate, and are priced at $9.99, $14.99 and $29.99 per month respectively. Being the most expensive tier, a Game Pass Ultimate subscription brings with it a host of benefits, including access to Ubisoft+ Classics and EA Play, as well as access to more than 400 titles and the ability to play first-party releases on day one.

The ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X created some positive buzz in August during Gamescom. Then, in September, another price hike for the Xbox Series X/S impacted the US market. You could now spend $800 on an Xbox Series X 2 TB Galaxy Black Edition – $50 more and technically less powerful than a PS5 Pro, that too for a console that’s only seen declining revenue in recent years. Make it make sense. Oh, and the Xbox Ally and Ally X cost $600 and $1000, respectively.

But hey, at least the minds at Microsoft Gaming have Game Pass, right? Surely they wouldn’t do anything to ruin its sole shining beacon. You would think, but as soon as October began, the company revealed a revamp of the service and a new tagline, “This is how we play.” Game Pass Ultimate is now $30 monthly, up from $20; Game Pass Standard is now Premium and costs $15; and Core has become Essential, costing $10. Is there irony in using Premium as the second-highest tier when PlayStation Plus considers it the highest? Surely not.

All tiers now have access to Xbox Cloud Gaming, which has officially left beta, and Ultimate subscribers get the best quality. That’s on top of all the other benefits – Fortnite Crew, EA Play, online multiplayer, over 75 day one titles per year (which isn’t bad considering this year’s output), and access to over 400 titles currently available. Perhaps the biggest change is that Premium won’t receive Xbox-published titles on the day of their launch. Instead, subscribers will receive access within a year. Could be in a month, two months, 364 days – roll the dice and find out.

Obviously, there’s plenty of backlash to Ultimate’s price increase and Premium’s second-tier status, especially in the wake of Xbox president Sarah Bond revealing Game Pass’s success, with $5 billion in sales from the last fiscal year alone. But the timing of all this is pretty blatant, not just because three big Xbox-published titles are out this month with Ninja Gaiden 4, Keeper, and The Outer Worlds 2, but also because Ultimate subscribers get early access to the Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 beta.

Of course, they receive the full game in November. Yet it feels like Microsoft is taking advantage of the FOMO around beta codes to push its now-more-expensive Ultimate subscriptions.

That’s not all – it recently came to light that subscribers, regardless of tier, no longer receive discounts on DLC and add-ons in the Xbox Store. It probably doesn’t make much sense for older titles like Forza Horizon, but think about the “now.” Indiana Jones and the Great Circle recently received a paid story expansion in The Order of Giants. Anyone who thinks of subscribing and enjoying the base game will now have to pay full price for the expansion. The same goes for those who might want to jump back into Starfield with its next expansion. It may be as bad as Shattered Space, but Microsoft is charging full price from everyone this time.

Naturally, this also applies to all add-ons and premium currency in Call of Duty. It’s yet another step to maximize returns on Black Ops 7, potentially because sales of last year’s title saw a significant drop due to Game Pass. Isn’t this just Microsoft trying to solve a problem that it fought tooth and nail to create?

Don’t worry, though, because it allegedly has something for everyone who feels that these pricing models aren’t worth it. And that is, according to The Verge’s Tom Warren, a free version of Xbox Cloud Gaming. With ads, naturally.

Reportedly in testing, it allows for streaming certain titles without needing Game Pass, including those that the player owns and Xbox Retro Classics. But before that, you’ll apparently need to watch two minutes of pre-roll ads, and there’s a limit of one hour per session. This is all subject to change, including the amount of “free” hours provided each month, but it will be available for PC, Xbox, web browsers, and, of course, the company’s upcoming handhelds.

Many questions come to mind when considering all this, but one of them isn’t why Microsoft is doing this if Game Pass is so profitable. It’s because of the profits that it’s going in this direction, further monetizing the heck out of a solid revenue stream. All these price hikes seemingly feed into Call of Duty in one way or another, and since it’s too late to put the genie back in the bottle with day-one Game Pass access, you can bet it’s going to try to squeeze every last bit of cash out to make up for any lost sales.

Also, is it any surprise that Ultimate is $10 more, the proposed increase to its $70 first-party triple-A titles before it backed down? I wouldn’t be surprised if it commits to the $80 price point next year, saying it’s justified with games like Fable, Gears of War: E-Day and Forza Horizon 6. And if you can’t afford it, hey, Game Pass Ultimate is only $30. Then you’ll wake up one day and suddenly it’s $40, but that’s still a better deal, right?

You would think I’m trying to make Microsoft look bad, especially since all those moves are to ensure even more profit on top of all the sales thus far. Honestly, the company itself is doing a fantastic job of that with its messaging, presenting these deals as a better value and pushing yet another soulless slogan to try and stand out. Maybe I’d be less bitter about all this if I knew all this wasn’t funding Microsoft’s larger AI push. Then again, maybe not.

At the end of the day, this isn’t about a subscription service with multiple times its value costing more now than it did before. It’s also not about criticizing a major corporation for pursuing profits – you might as well browbeat a shark when it senses blood in the water. Rather, it’s about the bigger picture – how Microsoft sacrificed first-party game sales for the sake of Game Pass, torpedoed its own console (and the previous generation) multiple times over, released shoddy products while attempting to save face in the most asinine ways, laid off employees and shuttered studios when its own management is lacking, and so on. And instead of investing in some kind of goodwill, or at the very least, trying to keep its current base satisfied in the sole area that it’s done so thus far, it wants to fleece them further.

It’s a bold strategy, and like many that Microsoft has pursued thus far, I’m not sure how well it will work out in the long term. But at this point, it’s in too deep to really do anything else but keep digging.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

“Last fiscal year, Xbox Game Pass sales reached a record high of $5 billion,” said Bond (via machine translation). “It’s a profitable business, and as more creators join Xbox Game Pass, payments to creators increase, so we think it’s a good business for creators.”

Questions about Game Pass have become even more common in recent days, thanks to Microsoft unveiling its new tiered plan system for Game Pass across PC and Xbox at the start of the month, with the price for Game Pass Ultimate increasing to $30 per month. On the lower-priced tiers are Game Pass Essential and Game Pass Premium, which are priced at $10 a month and $15 a month, respectively.

As you would expect from the new tiers, Game Pass Ultimate offers the most content, with more than 400 titles being playable. It’s also the only tier that offers games developed or published by Xbox console and PC games on day one of their release. Essential and Premium, on the other hand, both have fewer games available.

Essential is advertised as featuring “50+ games” across PC, Xbox and Cloud, whereas Premium features “200+ games”. The removal of first-party Xbox-published titles on day one of their release has likely been a cause for concern for several Game Pass users who weren’t already planning on sticking to the Ultimate plan.

Back in July, The Game Business editor-in-chief Christopher Dring had spoken about the profitability of Game Pass as a service. After conversations with some sources at Xbox, Dring noted that the service has been profitable, even if the sales “lost” from first-party studios’ releases are taken into account.

As for whether or not Game Pass as a whole is good for the gaming industry at large, however, opinions seem mixed. In August, former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden spoke about the service and how the question shouldn’t revolve around whether or not it has been profitable. Rather, he believes, questions should focus on whether or not the service is healthy for developers.

“They’re not creating value, putting it in the marketplace, hoping it explodes, and profit sharing, and overages, and all that nice stuff,” said Layden. “It’s just, ‘You pay me X dollars an hour, I built you a game, here, go put it on your servers’. I don’t think it’s really inspiring for game developers.”

Former Bethesda executive Pete Hines has also spoken about Game Pass, saying last month that there needs to be a balance struck when it comes to the subscription service’s offerings, as well as the needs of the people providing the content for it to succeed.

These include the addition of Hogwarts Legacy, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Skull and Bones and many other Ubisoft-published titles exclusively for Ultimate. Premium gains access to titles like Abiotic Factor, Against the Storm, Ara: History Untold, Diablo 4 and more, many previously available only in the Ultimate tier.

As for Essential, the lowest tier, it receives four new titles – Cities: Skylines Remastered, Disney Dreamlight Valley, Hades, and Warhammer 40,000 Darktide. All titles in the Premium and Essential tiers are playable for Ultimate subscribers.

This marks the second notable price increase for Game Pass Ultimate, with Microsoft raising prices from $16.99 to $19.99 in July 2024. Of course, this follows recent price hikes on all Xbox Series X/S hardware in the United States, which you can read more about here.

In exchange, subscribers will receive more than 75 day-one titles yearly, including everything published by Xbox Game Studios. You’ll also get benefits like Ubisoft+ Classics and EA Play with Fortnite Crew coming November 18th. Online multiplayer and “unlimited” cloud gaming at the best quality are also promised, along with the opportunity to earn up to $100 yearly in the Microsoft Store.

Game Pass Premium will retail for $14.99 monthly and offers access to more than 200 games. However, subscribers gain access to Xbox-published titles within a year of their release. Online multiplayer, “unlimited” cloud gaming with shorter wait times (but not the best quality), is also promised alongside earning up to $50 yearly in the Store.

Finally, Game Pass Essential offers access to over 50 titles with online multiplayer, unlimited cloud gaming, and earning up to $25 yearly in the Store for $9.99 every month.