I don’t like the price going up, but I can still justify it.
Many of the games that go day 1 into Gamepass are games I wouldn’t necessarily buy day 1. There is a fun aspect of playing every new Xbox game on release. Then there are the games like Call of Duty that I would’ve bought day 1 so it’s easy to do math on 2 or 3 of those games (MLB the Show is another) and just say hey these 2 or 3 games basically payed for the service. EA games are also a bonus, I enjoy having the EA library of games and the occasional 10% discount, pretty much every American gamer will buy NCAA Football this year, that’s discounted for Gamepass. Also, better than PlayStation or Nintendo so at least Gamepass is out doing the competition.
That said, I think the price should be lower. Xbox should still be in growth mode and worry more about getting new subscriptions with cheap price and free trials.
They should offer yearly subscriptions at a discount like they do for PS+ I believe and also have special sales during summer or Black Friday where you could subscribe for a year at let’s say 30% discount. You’d get a lot of people stacking and renewing at those moments if they did that. Like make it so the yearly price is what it used to cost before the increase at the very least.
They do yearly subs for Core, why not for the other tiers?
Xbox console market has plateaued, but PC market still has a lot of room for growth, so they can’t push them too much. At the moment console subscribers are subsidizing the other tiers. With PC market there is too much competition and Microsoft already has a tough fight with many rejecting windows store, so they can’t overcharge
I get about €4 worth of Rewards per month, just by doing the daily tasks in the mobile app, using Bing and playing on Xbox. “Working” on the weekly/monthly tasks isn’t worth it to me.
An annual subscription would definitely be welcome. But I assume MS has enough data to determine that it wouldn’t benefit them.
I share GP ultimate with some friends who play on PC so this is “just” a price increase for us really. I would be pissed if I were by my own though, as I only play on consoles. I think MS is trying to push people towards higher tiers (obviously) and PC.
It’s kinda odd but it seemed like none of the retailers actually increased the 3 month card cost over 45 last year when they raised prices, and you can still regularly pick them up for 30% off or more (I bought 3 years from woot a couple weeks back at about 33 for 3 months), so I’m curious to see what they charge with the new 20/ month price.
COD only players yearly costs will be:
$70 for annual game + $75 for Gamepass core 12/mo = $145+tax
This option still remains and is still a great value for 1/yrs worth of entertainment.
Gamepass Ultimate at $240 per 1/yrs monthly subscriber which includes:
Xbox Gamepass New Day One releases, full BC library, Xcloud gaming, Online multiplayer, PC gamepass, EA play library and perk/discounts.
That’s still an amazing deal for 1/yrs worth of entertainment. I feel $30 would be my current ceiling for value and I don’t even have that much gaming time.
Even without the VPN tricks just buying codes at discounts and then converting to Ultimate ends up being way better value than the MS points method
I always be worried about VPN stuff in case of bans, people are always losing access to MS reward stuff because of VPN usage
I already had like a year of not being able to get points because of them thinking I was in a region I wasn’t and that was without a VPN, stupid internet provider
