{"id":619310,"date":"2026-04-21T18:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T18:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/619310\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T18:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T18:03:09","slug":"xbox-cuts-game-pass-prices-but-new-call-of-duty-games-will-no-longer-hit-the-service-on-day-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/619310\/","title":{"rendered":"Xbox cuts Game Pass prices but new Call of Duty games will no longer hit the service on day one"},"content":{"rendered":"

Xbox is cutting<\/a> the prices of both Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, effective immediately, but there\u2019s one big caveat. First, the good news: Game Pass Ultimate now costs $23 per month, down from $30. PC Game Pass will now run you $14 a month instead of $16.50. The Xbox team noted in a blog post<\/a> that prices may vary by region.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a smart, much-needed decision. In a memo that leaked last week, new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma expressed concern<\/a> over the high price of Game Pass, stating that it \u201chas become too expensive for players, so we need a better value equation. Long term, we will evolve Game Pass into a more flexible system which will take time to test and learn around.” Sharma reiterated that publicly in a post on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In October, Microsoft increased<\/a> Game Pass Ultimate to $30 per month, which was a 50 percent price hike. It was the second time<\/a> in 15 months that the company had jacked up the monthly fee, making it an unjustifiable expense for many<\/a>. The price of a PC Game Pass subscription also rose by $4.50 per month, and now Microsoft is bringing that back down a bit too.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur players cover a wide breadth of geographies, preferences, and tastes, so while there isn\u2019t a single model that\u2019s best for everyone, this change responds to a lot of feedback we\u2019ve gotten so far,\u201d the Xbox team wrote. \u201c We\u2019ll continue to listen and learn.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is one giant tradeoff here: new Call of Duty games will no longer be available on Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass on day one. They\u2019ll eventually hit those tiers about a year later, during the following holiday season. That means Call of Duty titles will be the only first-party Xbox games that don\u2019t hit Game Pass on their release date.<\/p>\n

This, of course, is an attempt to generate more revenue from one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world. Call of Duty is a major reason why Microsoft shelled out $68.7 billion to buy Activision Blizzard<\/a> a few years back. While Call of Duty fans on PlayStation still had to pay full price for the last few annual releases to play them as soon as possible, Xbox and PC players have been able to hop in to them via Game Pass<\/a>. (There\u2019s still no sign of Call of Duty on Switch or Switch 2<\/a> as yet!)<\/p>\n

There had been rumors that Microsoft would carve out Call of Duty from the current versions of Game Pass and give those tiers a price cut. Chatter suggests that the company may introduce yet another, higher-level Game Pass tier (or an add-on) that will include day-one Call of Duty games, but there\u2019s no official word of that as yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Xbox is cutting the prices of both Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, effective immediately, but there\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[196629,49,3253,48,232559,61,6734],"class_list":["post-619310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-asha-sharma","tag-ca","tag-call-of-duty","tag-canada","tag-game-pass-ultimate","tag-technology","tag-xbox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}