It seems like it's the year for price increases in the games industry, and that unfortunately hasn't protected Xbox from the fury of its users after a shocking change to one key Game Pass feature.
Pretty much everything in the gaming world has gone up in price over the past 12 months, and while you'd typically expect the end-of-cycle period to welcome several healthy discounts, many gamers have been left out of pocket.
Nothing has quite hit the level of shock that Xbox Game Pass subscribers faced on October 1, as the once-considered 'best deal in gaming' has been met with a change that has forced many to cancel their subscriptions.
While Xbox has had a relatively rough experience in the console wars for the past two generations, one of the biggest selling points of the green side of things was Game Pass — specifically the ability to get all first-party games day one with a subscription.
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This was already a fantastic deal when it included games like Halo and Forza, but it became a no-brainer for many when Microsoft's acquisitions of Bethesda and Activision Blizzard went through. It meant titles like Starfield, Call of Duty, and even the next Elder Scrolls were added to that category.
All this for $19.99 seemed like a fantastic deal, but a recent price increase and a number of key changes to the 'Ultimate' tier have left many second-guessing whether they should keep their subscription active.
Revealed in a new blog post from Xbox, the price of Game Pass' 'Ultimate' tier is increasing by 50% to $29.99 per month. This comes only a year after the cost was bumped from $16.99 to $19.99.
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That means players will need to fork out $359.88 every single year to have every Xbox game day one on the service, and with most games coming in at the $70 to $80 range, that equates to 4.5 to 5 titles that you could otherwise purchase outright and own forever.
Of course, you don't just buy Game Pass for the day one titles, as it has a library of hundreds of other games alongside benefits like online multiplayer, cloud gaming, and many more, but the complete access to Xbox's lineup was definitely the biggest selling point.
Additionally, you can now only get Xbox games on day one with the Ultimate tier, with the middle Premium tier only giving access "within a year of launch," although it is half the price.
"So that's a $10 a month increase of my Ultimate Game Pass. That's a cancellation from me and I've had Ultimate Game Pass since 2019," writes one commenter on Reddit in response to the news.
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Another writes that they "believe this will pretty much kill any momentum (what very little they had) at Xbox. What a s****y decision," with a third proclaiming that "the 'best value in gaming' kinda just became the 'biggest ripoff in gaming'."
So many people were rushing to end their subscriptions that the official cancellation page crashed shortly following the announcement of the price increase, so if anything, many hope that Microsoft has got the message.