Asha Sharma, new boss of Xbox at Microsoft, admitted in an internal memo that Xbox Game Pass has become too expensive for gamers. “Game Pass is at the heart of the Xbox gaming experience. It is also clear that the current model is not the final model.”she wrote in the memo obtained by The Verge. “In the short term, Game Pass has become too expensive for players, so we need a better value equation. “In the long term, we will evolve Game Pass into a more flexible system, which will take time to test and develop.”
Xbox Game Pass is becoming too expensive for gamers
This mea culpa comes after a 50% price increase for Game Pass Ultimate, increased to 26.99 euros per month last year. Microsoft made this increase for a series of improvements across all of its subscriptions. The main element of this increase was elsewhere: the integration of Call of Duty in Game Pass in the summer of 2024, a decision which had divided Microsoft internally, with some fearing that the turnover generated by direct sales of the franchise would be cannibalized by the subscription.
This weekend, reports emerged from Windows Central’s Jez Corden that Microsoft is considering removing Call of Duty of Xbox Game Pass. If this hypothesis came to fruition, it would constitute a particularly costly admission: the decision which officially justified the price increase would thus be recognized as a pricing error.
Asha Sharma herself mentions the numerous comments from players on social media and other parts of the Internet surrounding the rumors regarding the change and promises to “more in depth” with the Xbox teams next week. However, players should not expect any immediate changes in the coming days, but the direction has now been decided by the boss of Xbox herself.
