With Game Pass offers constantly fluctuating, players often wonder about what games they can grab while subscribed. While Microsoft changes the games included with the pass, they have never altered the subscription price itself. That is until now, as the company is choosing to slightly raise the monthly price of its Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate tiers for the first time ever. Game Pass is set to include highly anticipated upcoming PC games such as Starfield as they release, making it one of the most popular subscription services today.
Despite the small hike in price, PC gamers don’t need to worry too much since only Xbox Game Pass will be affected. However, the Game Pass Ultimate is still going to see a rise in price and it could include PC players as it works on both console and on the desktop application. The base Game Pass for Xbox will go up from $9.99 (£7.99) to $10.99 (£8.99) while Game Pass Ultimate will now be $16.99 (£12.99) instead of $14.99 (£10.99) per month.
If you use the dual-platform subscription, you will be paying two dollars more a month now for Ultimate. Along with the increase in price that Game Pass is seeing, Microsoft is also making the Xbox Series X slightly more expensive. In a statement to The Verge, the head of communications at Xbox wrote that the company had “held on our prices for consoles for many years and have adjusted the prices to reflect the competitive conditions in each market.”
If you are already subscribed to the affected PC Game Pass, you will not notice the price changes until Sunday, August 13. New monthly subscribers will see the Game Pass price change on Thursday, July 6. If you pay yearly instead of monthly, you won’t notice the price difference until you go to renew your subscription as it ends. Players in Chile, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, and Saudi Arabia will not face any price increases at all.
Check out some of this year’s best PC games if you want an idea of what to play next. You can also browse through the Starfield system requirements if you’re looking forward to the upcoming Game Pass RPG and want to make sure you can run it.