- Analysts agree on the price reduction of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and the elimination of Obligations titles as first day deals “wasn’t surprising”
- Circana’s Mat Piscatella says the offer “did not generate a significant increase in Xbox console sales or even subscriptions.”
- Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere Analysis says: “Microsoft was leaving a substantial amount of revenue on the table due to a loss in premium sales.”
Industry analysts seem to agree that Microsoft’s decision to cut the price of Xbox Game Pass and remove Obligations games as day one launch titles was the right decision.
Earlier this week, it was announced that Game Pass Ultimate will drop from $29.99 to $22.99 per month, while PC Game Pass will drop from $16.49 to $13.99 per month.
Furthermore, new Obligations The games will only be available “about a year” after their release, but recent titles like Black Ops 6 and Black ops 7 will continue to be available to members.
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Now, several analysts have said GameIndustry.biz that the measure was inevitable because the offer of new services on the first day Obligations Games weren’t driving console sales or subscriptions.
“From the beginning it was clear Obligations In the Game Pass experiment, there was no significant increase in Xbox console sales or subscriptions,” said Circana’s Mat Piscatella. “Therefore, this change is not surprising at all. A little late, perhaps. But it’s not surprising.”
Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere Analysis agreed with Piscatella’s sentiment, saying that “the commercial reasoning for pursuing a subscription-first strategy for new releases the size of Cod “has not been done.”
“Its inclusion in Game Pass was expected to boost the service, but these intense short-term increases in subscribers taking advantage of cheaper access to one of the most popular premium games available have not been able to be sustained in the long term,” Harding-Rolls explained.
The analyst goes on to say that with Obligations With the games being a day one offering, “Microsoft was leaving a substantial amount of revenue on the table due to a loss in premium sales,” explaining that the data “never suggested” that their inclusion in Game Pass would have “such a large impact on game sales.”
“I am certainly not at all convinced that the inclusion of Obligations on Game Pass on day 1 had a significant impact on sales of the game on, say, PlayStation platforms,” he said. “If future versions of Obligations deliver the experience your players want, then sales will thrive regardless of your inclusion or exclusion from Game Pass.”
Both Piscatella and Harding-Rolls agree that the Ultimate tier price cut will be beneficial in the long run, with the latter calling it a “balanced solution” for the broader player base.
“I think the price reduction should help the number of subscribers grow,” said Piscatella; However, he doubts this will lead to increased spending on Game Pass in the short term.
It went on to say that subscription spending has been a big source of revenue for the market over the past two years, but says the subscription service’s original $29.99 monthly cost “made the value part of the consumer calculus questionable.”
Despite the elimination of Obligations games as day one Game Pass releases, Harding-Rolls believes this will not mean the end of day one launch titles on the service and suggests it remains a “legitimate new release strategy for select games and first-party releases will remain central to this approach.”
“However, it opens the door to a more flexible approach to launching windows of new first-party games more generally,” the analyst added. “As the industry has seen with the move away from platform exclusivity, Microsoft is not averse to changing its strategy to deliver a better outcome for the business.”
The latest changes to Game Pass come after Xbox CEO Asha Sharma admitted in a leaked memo that the service was “too expensive” for gamers.
The Verge reported that Obligations and the release of Black ops 7 were among the main contributors to Microsoft raising the price of Game Pass in October 2025.
While Xbox Game Pass is now cheaper, prices are still higher than last year, before Microsoft increased the cost across all subscription tiers. Before the price increase, Ultimate was $19.99 per month.
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