Xbox Game Pass Standard and the rising price of play

July 13, 2024 10:00 AM

Xbox Game Pass is Microsoft’s subscription service for games.

Image Credit: Microsoft

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Things are rough out there in the games industry. That much is obvious — between thousands of layoffs and who knows how many project cancelations, companies on every single level in the industry are retrenching to survive the year right now. But unfortunately, things are also getting rough for players too, as games and gaming-related services are starting to get more expensive. This week, Microsoft announced that it is once again raising the price of Xbox Game Pass, and it’s adding a new “Standard” tier that is cheaper, but doesn’t have day one games.

Game Pass’s PC and Ultimate tiers are going up in price by $2 and $3 per month, respectively, and Xbox Game Pass for Console is also going away for new users (existing users are getting grandfathered in). This is all happening shortly before Microsoft reportedly plans to begin adding Activision Blizzard titles to the service. From a business perspective, it makes sense to try and get the most value out of a service that will have Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 at launch — there will be plenty of gamers who subscribe for one or two months just to be able to play that game at launch for lower than full retail price, and then unsubscribe. From a consumer perspective, though, those extra two or three dollars can hurt.

It’s not just Xbox Game Pass that raised this particular topic this week. EA and Respawn announced a few days ago that they were changing something about the Apex Legends battle pass: Namely, that players can only purchase it with real money, rather than in-game currency. They’ve also split the battle pass in twain, offering two 60-rank passes every six weeks rather than one 110-rank pass every season. To say players haven’t reacted well to this would be to do them a disservice: At present, the game is being review-bombed on Steam with some absolutely blistering comments about the new battle pass system.

Not a happy topic this week, I know … but hey, I’m sick this week, so I’m in a melancholic mood. Oh well, new game releases are a bit lean this week, so I’m going to be playing some old favorites and some cozy titles to try and get my personal health bar to regenerate over the weekend. I do want to try and get another replay of Dragon Age: Inquisition under my belt before Veilguard launches — and I might as well enjoy some of the games on Xbox Game Pass until the prices jump up on September 12.

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