Xbox Game Pass Price Cut Works, But Ultimate Still Costs More

Microsoft cut Game Pass Ultimate to $22.99 a month on April 21, down from the $29.99 it had charged since October, and Xbox chief Asha Sharma now tells staff the reduction is already pulling players back. PC Game Pass fell in the same move, from $16.49 to $13.99. In an internal memo, the company says acquisitions are growing and retention is improving since the cut took effect.

Set that against the price history, though, and the win looks more like a rescue. Before Microsoft’s 50% increase last October, the top console subscription cost $19.99 a month. So even after the cut, subscribers pay above where they started, and the celebrated rebound is largely Xbox recovering ground it gave away itself.

The Price Cut That Only Half Reverses the Hike

The April reduction was real money off the sticker, not a marketing trick. Ultimate, the all-in tier that bundles console and PC libraries with cloud streaming, dropped seven dollars. PC Game Pass shed two-fifty. For anyone who kept paying through the winter, the monthly bill genuinely went down.

What it did not do was return prices to the pre-hike line. The October 2025 increase pushed the flagship console plan from $19.99 to $29.99, a jump of almost exactly 50%, alongside a rebuild of the lineup that folded the old Core and Standard plans into new Essential and Premium tiers. The April cut walked roughly two-thirds of the way back.

Ultimate still runs three dollars a month above its old price; PC subscribers pay two dollars more than the $11.99 they once did. Asha Sharma, the former Meta product executive who took over Microsoft’s gaming business in February, framed the smaller number to employees as evidence the strategy is turning.

Since our price reduction we have seen acquisitions grow and retention improve, which is a good first step.

That line, from a staff memo obtained by The Verge, is the entire public case for the reversal. Notice what it leaves out. No subscriber count, no churn rate, no revenue figure. “A good first step” is the strongest claim on the table, and it is measured against a low Microsoft set itself.

Why Sharma Cut Prices Seven Months After Raising Them

The cut did not arrive in a vacuum. It landed in the middle of the worst stretch Xbox hardware has faced in decades, with the console business shrinking and the company leaning ever harder on subscriptions to carry the segment.

• About 30% year-over-year drop in Xbox hardware revenue across recent quarters, per Microsoft’s own earnings disclosures.
• Roughly 9% decline in total gaming revenue for the quarter ending December 2025, a fall of about $623 million to $5.99 billion.
• Around 9,000 jobs cut across Microsoft in 2025, with games studios among the hardest hit.
• About 34 million Game Pass subscribers and near $5 billion in annual revenue at last report, the engine Microsoft now relies on as console sales slide.

Sharma replaced Phil Spencer, the long-serving gaming boss, and inherited a service whose own price increase had backfired. Her memo concedes the damage plainly: “Growth slowed down and subscriber loss accelerated after the pricing and SKU changes last year,” she wrote, referring to the October overhaul of stock-keeping units (SKUs, the individual product plans a customer can buy).

She has been blunt about the size of the hole, too. “We will not solve this in one moment or one launch,” the memo reads. “We will have to outwork the problem in front of us in our path to restore durable growth.” That is not the language of a company that thinks one price tweak fixed anything. It is the language of a business trying to undo a self-inflicted wound before the next earnings print.

Cheaper Ultimate Now Skips Call of Duty at Launch

The lower price came with a quiet subtraction. Starting this year, new Call of Duty games will no longer hit Ultimate or PC Game Pass on day one. They will arrive roughly a year after release, during the following holiday window, while existing Call of Duty titles already in the library stay put.

For a service that spent years selling “every first-party game, the day it launches” as the headline benefit, that is a meaningful walk-back. Call of Duty is the single biggest annual draw Microsoft owns since the Activision Blizzard deal, and pulling it out of the day-one promise softens exactly the pitch that justified Ultimate’s premium in the first place.

The franchise has been reshaping its console footprint elsewhere as well, with the Warzone delisting on Xbox One and PS4 trimming support for older hardware. Cheaper Ultimate, then, is also thinner Ultimate, and the trade is the part the price-cut headlines tend to skip.

The Discord Deal Is Game Pass’s New Front Door

The clearest sign of where Sharma wants to take Game Pass is not the cut at all. It is the Discord partnership announced on May 11, which bundles a new Starter Edition of Game Pass into a Discord Nitro membership at no extra cost. Nitro stays $10 a month, or $100 a year, and Game Pass now rides along inside it.

The Starter Edition is deliberately limited, built to hook lapsed and never-tried players rather than replace a paid plan:

• A rotating library of more than 50 games, including Stardew Valley, Hades, Fallout 4, Doom Eternal, and Grounded.
• Ten hours of cloud gaming, enough to sample titles on devices without a console.
• No price change to Nitro, which keeps the cost entirely on Microsoft’s side of the ledger.
• A catch console players have flagged: coverage of the tier indicates it does not include online console multiplayer, the feature that usually anchors a paid subscription.

This is the “more flexible system” Sharma told staff she wants to test and learn around. A free-with-Nitro funnel widens the top of the pipeline cheaply, and titles like the day-one Game Pass launch of Mariachi Legends give the catalog fresh reasons to convert curious players into paying ones. Whether they upgrade to Ultimate is the open question the bundle is built to answer.

Where Every Game Pass Tier Sits After the Cut

The ladder a shopper sees today is busier than it was a year ago, and the gaps between rungs matter more now that day-one content is no longer guaranteed at every level.

• Essential, $9.99: online console multiplayer, member discounts, and a smaller rotating library. The entry point, with no day-one first-party releases.
• Premium, $14.99: a console library of hundreds of games and multiplayer, but new first-party titles arrive within 12 months of launch rather than on day one.
• PC Game Pass, $13.99: day-one first-party games on PC (Call of Duty excepted) plus EA Play, now cheaper after the cut.
• Ultimate, $22.99: the 500-plus-game library across console, PC, and cloud, with EA Play, Ubisoft+ Classics, and Fortnite Crew layered on top.

For most console-only players, Premium does the heavy lifting at a price that never moved. Ultimate is still the only tier that gathers everything in one place, which is why its sticker carries the symbolic weight Sharma keeps pointing at. The cheaper number got subscribers back in the door; the thinner day-one promise and the still-elevated price are the cost of that return. If acquisitions and retention hold through the holiday quarter, the reversal looks like a genuine reset. If the bounce fades once the discount stops being novel, the next memo will read very differently from this one.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Much Is Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Now?

Game Pass Ultimate costs $22.99 a month as of April 21, 2026, down from $29.99. The price may vary by region, and it covers the full cross-platform library, cloud streaming, and bundled memberships like EA Play and Ubisoft+ Classics.

Why Did Xbox Cut Game Pass Prices?

Microsoft cut prices because its October 2025 hike backfired. CEO Asha Sharma told staff that growth slowed and subscriber loss accelerated after that increase, and that acquisitions and retention have improved since the April reduction took effect.

Is Game Pass Ultimate Cheaper Than Before the 2025 Hike?

No. At $22.99, Ultimate still costs three dollars a month more than the $19.99 the top console tier charged before the October 2025 increase. PC Game Pass at $13.99 also sits two dollars above its old $11.99 price.

Will New Call of Duty Games Be on Game Pass at Launch?

No longer. Starting this year, new Call of Duty titles will not join Ultimate or PC Game Pass on day one. They are expected to arrive about a year after release during the following holiday season, while existing Call of Duty games remain in the library.

How Do I Get Game Pass Through Discord Nitro?

A Discord Nitro membership, priced at $10 a month or $100 a year, now includes a Game Pass Starter Edition where available. It offers 50-plus games and ten hours of cloud gaming at no added cost, though reports indicate it excludes online console multiplayer.

What Are All the Game Pass Tiers and Prices in 2026?

After the April cut, the tiers are Essential at $9.99, PC Game Pass at $13.99, Premium at $14.99, and Ultimate at $22.99 a month. A free Starter Edition is available through Discord Nitro. Premium and Essential prices were unchanged by the cut.