{"id":54273,"date":"2025-10-01T14:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T14:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/54273\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T14:08:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T14:08:09","slug":"xbox-game-pass-price-increases-hogwarts-legacy-and-more-new-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/54273\/","title":{"rendered":"Xbox Game Pass Price Increases, Hogwarts Legacy and More New Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMicrosoft<\/a> announced Wednesday it will be revamping its tiered gaming subscription service Xbox<\/a> Game Pass with expanded game libraries, including PC titles, unlimited cloud gaming, new in-game benefits and a reconfigured rewards system \u2014 and increasing Game Pass\u2019 pricing to match the changes.<\/p>\n

\n\tPreviously, Xbox Game Pass<\/a> offered a Core package priced at $9.99 per month, a Standard option for $14.99, and an Ultimate that costs $19.99. Now, the Game Pass product will be reworked into the Essential tier ($9.99), the Premium version ($14.99), and the new Ultimate edition, which is increasing to $29.99 per month. <\/p>\n

\n\tAll three tiers will now be playable across PC, console and cloud gaming.<\/p>\n

\n\tPer Xbox, \u201cToday\u2019s Game Pass Core subscribers will automatically move to Essential, Standard subscribers will transition to Premium, and Ultimate subscribers will remain in the Ultimate plan.\u201d The PC-only Game Pass offering will continue as an option for existing subscribers, but no longer offered to new customers.<\/p>\n

\n\tAdditionally, Game Pass is expanding its library Wednesday to include more than 45 new titles like, \u201cHogwarts Legacy\u201d and \u201cDiablo IV,\u201d which are available at both the Ultimate and Premium levels.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe price increase announcement was made just hours after Amazon unveiled a major overhaul to its gaming offer, Amazon Luna<\/a>, which will now include more popular Microsoft-owned titles, like \u201cIndiana Jones and the Great Circle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTo account for Ultimate\u2019s $10 price increase, customers at that level will now have access to more than 75 day-one releases a year, including upcoming games \u201cCall of Duty: Black Ops 7,\u201d \u201cHigh on Life 2,\u201d \u201cKeeper,\u201d \u201cNinja Gaiden 4,\u201d and \u201cThe Outer Worlds 2,\u201d and receive subscriptions to Fortnite Crew (priced at $11.99 per month) and Ubisoft+ Classics (nearly $16 a month) at no additional cost.<\/p>\n

\n\tXbox will also be offering Ultimate subscribers \u201cour best quality streaming and shortest wait times\u201d via Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is moving out of its \u201cBeta\u201d testing phase as of Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe changes to Xbox Game Pass come on the heels of Microsoft setting a high price for its upcoming Ally handheld gaming consoles<\/a>, and increasing the cost<\/a> of its existing Xbox Series X and S hardware. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft announced Wednesday it will be revamping its tiered gaming subscription service Xbox Game Pass with expanded game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[609,111,139,69,145,37877,46027],"class_list":["post-54273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-microsoft","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology","tag-xbox","tag-xbox-game-pass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}