13
votes
Updates to Xbox Game Pass: Introducing Essential, Premium, and Ultimate plans
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- Authors
- Joe Skrebels, Xbox Wire Editor-in-Chief
- Published
- Oct 1 2025
- Word count
- 1987 words
Sounds like the death of Xbox to me. 2 price increases this year on their consoles, and year over year increases on GamePass, with Ultimate now costing $35 USD/month. Might as well buy your 2-3 AAA games and save money along the way. I wonder if Microsoft will eventually scrap their console division altogether and solely focus on GamePass? What does everyone else think?
I was personally about to subscribe to PC GamePass starting in 2026 but have no decided not to due to the almost 40-50% price increase. Will just continue playing my uncompleted/unfinished steam games.
The only response from this that I have appreciated, is surprisingly, is the one from GameStop.
My Series X hasn't even been plugged in for 6 months, and when I first got it , I stacked as much Gamepass as I could. It ran out early this year, I had a reorg in my room, and it just didn't seem worthwhile even plugging it back in. Nothing worth cabling it up for really. I lost access to FH4 despite having bought some paid content for it, managed to snag it on Steam before it was deleted and that was the last thing really.
That's surprising to me, this year has probably been the best year for GamePass yet, and I haven't been an Xbox Live subscriber since, well... it was called Xbox Live.
Avowed, Silksong, Oblivion Remastered, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are all good to great games, unless you're primarily a PC gamer/already own them.
I thought Avowed was terrible (and I was gutted, because the first reveal trailer looked /fantastic/ but the end product was nothing, at all, like it), Silksong is cheap (and I only bought it to support it because it, and its predecessor are much too difficult for me), Oblivion was a let down, and I had to get E33 on PC so I could mod it to be easier, otherwise I'd never have been able to play it.
All my favourite exclusive is on the PS5, so I'll stick with that. I just can't think of anything I'd want to play that I can only get on XBox, or cheaper on Steam.
Found I was only using GP as a free demo platform.
A bit off topic: PC Hollow Knight and Silksong are both easy to mod and have mods that lower difficulty. Only really mentioning this because you mentioned doing it for E33.
More on topic: the way Microsoft has consolidated their gaming platforms such that they've more-or-less erased the divide between console and PC is.... interesting. On one hand it's kind of cool and better for customers, but on the other it massively devalues the console because there will be practically no console exclusives. Aside from wanting the Game Pass subscription itself the library overlap makes it feel like most people will find themselves better served by Steam, which is just a very weird market position. This leaves the console seemingly only targeting the segment that wants a plug-and-play solution rather than a gaming PC minus those that would pick PlayStation or Switch instead.
Twice I bought three years worth of gold and converted it to Game Pass, so when it expires in a few months, I think I got my money's worth. Bought Vampire Survivors and Balatro outright, and probably put in as much time into those as everything else on the service.
The last time I was subscribed to Gamepass was during Starfield for a month before I got bored. It was still back then an incredible deal even if I barely played any games, I still am thankful for it saving me the full price of Starfield at launch
Yeah I guess it makes sense if you are saving over half the price of a full price AAA game, but I simply don't play one of those every month.
I've been a long time Xbox Live subscriber, ever since I first got it to play Halo 3 almost two decades ago. But, this push to more subscription based stuff is losing me. I want to own my games, not rent them.
I will say that I am probably in a different boat than some people here. My friend gave me a Series S for 50 euro and that's my next gen or current gen thing that I have. I personally don't see much difference in buying a digital game or renting it, but if you have a series X it is a significant difference
As someone who bought an Xbox to play GTA 6 on launch next year, I'm just bummed I'll have a glorified BluRay player after I've had my fill of the game. I was hoping to use it to play games before they came to PC until it became obsolete, but after everything I've heard I'll probably have mine sold by this time next year, if not sooner.