Following Xbox’s recent changes to Game Pass involving limiting cloud gaming, it looks like the company has more changes lined up for the subscription service. A new rumor indicates that, sometime next year, Xbox will consolidate its Game Pass subscription service into two tiers – one with ads and one without.
The ad-supported tier will seemingly be priced at $12.99 per month, while the other tier will cost $19.99 per month. Both tiers will also lose out on a few features, such as day-one first-party game releases and cloud streaming. The latter is set to be available as part of a separate bundle costing $5.99 for 25 hours’ worth of playtime. A family plan is also expected, priced at $5.99 per month on top of what Game Pass already costs.
Interestingly, it looks like Xbox might be going back to its Xbox Live Gold days, with the cost of multiplayer capability on consoles once more being separated from Game Pass. Multiplayer access is slated to cost $10.99 per month. All of these changes are expected to go live sometime between February and April 2027.
These details were reported by ResetEra user Slayven, who cited an unnamed source that has seemingly been correct in the past. In a follow-up post, noted leaker and industry insider Nate the Hate pointed out that Slayven shared details about Game Pass splitting its subscription service into Core and Standard tiers in 2025, before Microsoft made the official announcement.
“So, the individual giving them information clearly has knowledge of some matters,” wrote Nate. “Whether the intended timeline stays true or slides about, we’ll learn in due time.”
Following recent shake-ups at Xbox, including layoffs that involved approximately 1,600 job cuts, there have been plenty of questions raised about the viability of Game Pass as a business model. One report from back in July has indicated that there were many members of leadership amongst Xbox’s various development teams who “absolutely detest” the subscription service.
“There are a lot of people out there in studio leadership within Xbox who absolutely detest Game Pass and think it has destroyed the value of their games,” alleged Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. “They think it has taken away the value from all games in general and has been a detriment to the games industry because of how it devalues games.”
A report from June has also indicated that there might be a wider move among Xbox to move away from relying so heavily on Game Pass. Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios’ CEO, Shams Jorjani, revealed back in June that the company has been freezing its deals with third-party studios to bring titles to the service.
Back in May, there were also reports indicating that a family plan for Game Pass was once in the works, but ultimately scrapped due to objections from third-party publishers. The report noted that Electronic Arts was the main culprit for this, and that the company “hated” the idea of the service getting a family plan.
Earlier this year, we also saw reports indicating that Microsoft has been looking into how it can allow subscribers to “pick your own plan” when it comes to Game Pass subscriptions.
