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Imo, it still is but it’s also reach the point were as good as it, the price for it is not worth staying sub for more than a month, unless using a code you get at a discount.
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The main question is “how many games do you play”.
It has gone from something that was a no brainer for literally anyone to have, even if you only were using it ocassionally, to something that only the most serious users would consider keeping (for Ultimate at least).
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Stacking codes makes the final price still compete with a Year of PS+ Premium, especially that GPU gets many games Day 1 and first party games don’t leave it over time.
Unless MS gets rid of code stacking or make conversion even worse, it’s still best deal in gaming.
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Good article.
I appreciated what you said about it feeling like Xbox is putting the screws to its most passionate and nostalgic fans.
It’s a bit difficult to put into words exactly, and I don’t want to fall into treating Microsoft like “good guy Greg,” they’ve always been a for-profit company trying to get our money, but there was a sense post 2015 that Microsoft was going out of its way to treat its fans right: Free upgrade patches, amazing BC technology that amounted to free remastered games, Game Pass being such an unbelievable bargain that it was illegal 
, etc. And it kind of feels like those days are gone. Like they tried giving players the white glove treatment, while other companies nickel and dimed their fans, and were rewarded with seeing their console market share shrink to nothing, so now they’re done trying to be Mr. Nice Guy and the new strat is “Fuck you, pay me.” I don’t know, it is what it is. Just feels kind of like the end of an era.
I know I no longer feel pampered as an Xbox fan, and for a while there, frankly, I did. It was nice!
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For some reason they really dislike us. Especially those of us who are console gamers. And heavens forbid you live outside of the US!
Nah, fuck em.
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Do you know the best place for codes? Is Loaded.com the cheapest around?
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I checked loaded.com earlier and all of the GPU codes are sold out.
I think people need to compare that to prices of other things in life. I normally make breakfast for my family in the morning. Work things got in the way today. I bought breakfast at mcdonalds. It was well over $30 dollars. Not including tax. After the meal I didn’t even feel that great. It’s all relative.
Agreed. When I look at my play time of Game Pass titles this year, it’s Hellblade II, South of Midnight, Doom: The Dark Ages, Ninja Gaiden II Black, while continuing to play COD, Forza and Horizon 5. I’ve been too busy this year to dive into Avowed and Gears Reloaded.
When the subscription was approximately 3 full priced games a year, it was easy to justify. It was basically COD plus two other games. Now it’s COD plus four other games.
Something to also note is, by the time I get to games like Avowed, Outer Worlds 2, etc., they are often on sale. For example, Avowed is 33% off on Steam. Hellblade II is 65%, Doom: The Dark Ages is 33%, South of Midnight is 25%, Ninja Gaiden II Black is 40%.
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I’ve been using Gamivo, since they seem to have VAT nicely sorted out, sometimes Eneba.
You could look here for options: https://gg.deals/subscription/xbox-game-pass-core-12-months/
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I’m thinking I that I play Indiana Jones and Outer Worlds 2 as much as I can before December and then drop down to Premium. Then maybe just buy Forza Horizon 6 outright.
Just kind of sucks to have to do this math and strategizing when Ultimate was such a no brainer for me before. 
Yep pretty much, and too many of the other sites are either dodgy or don’t include VAT etc.
If you’re in the UK, 3 months is still available for just over £31 which is a decent drop from the spike earlier
I ended up ordering 3x 12 months Game Pass Core on Loaded. It says 12 months and I thought it was a single code but it’s actually 12 separate codes, except they messed up my order and I’ve opened a ticket since they only gave me 12 codes but I paid for 36 codes.
I was expecting each code to give me 55% of the time when converting to Ultimate as I only had 1 year left on my Ultimate subscription. But each code was actually extending my subscription by 1 month for some reason. Each time it said the conversion for Essential to Ultimate will add this much, are you ok with it, but wach time was an extra 30 days! I’m not complaining, just wasn’t expecting this! I’m now good until August 2027 and still waiting on 24 more codes lol
Also, in their reply to my ticket, they say they are aware of an issue right now with Xbox Game Pass codes allocation; I wonder if a lot of us are actually stacking like that right now!
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I thought it was worth a shot, but in the UK I just got given one code for 12 months, which converted to 3 months and 2 days of Ultimate.
Oh well, at least I’m now stacked until end of March 2027 lol…
I bought the WW code as they were out of Canada only codes. 104$ CAD for each 12 months
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Extending GPU has worse conversion ratio than upgrading.
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Just bought a 1 month worldwide one to give it a try, it added 12 days.
So guessing the bug is NA only
While im subscribed to Game Pass Ultimate through July 2027, it will come down to how many games am I getting from Microsoft and third party publishers that I want to play in a calendar year? 2025 for example is insane - 6 Microsoft games plus 1 in Game Preview (Towerborne) and 1 third party game in Expedition 33 so if I had to pay $30 a month in 2025, it would have been worth it because I still would have been saving a good amount of money.
Microsoft should have included expansions at the very least especially when they normally have a horrible attach rate. Would have also been better to include Ubisoft+ which includes their games day one but I can see why they went with Classics instead. lol
Back to me, including Ubisoft+, I haven’t bought a Ubisoft game since Far Cry 6 four years ago. Everything else has been via Ubisoft+ and this applies to their expansions as well since they’re included at their respective release.
It all depends on what Game Pass Ultimate offers you as a whole as well as the platform/eco-system itself. For me, im still saving a shit ton of money every year and even at $30 a month when the time comes, that would still be the case.
Oh well. It all is what it is I guess.
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I don’t have the time to make it a “good deal” with the new price tag so for me it’s a no
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