The price of Xbox Game Pass will go up again

Last week there was quite a surprising announcement in this regard Xbox Game Pass, as price increases are confirmed across all membership tiers, adding that a new tier called Standard is now entering, removing new users from the possibility of trying new launch titles. And from what noted analysts have indicated, it was inevitable that this would happen, since the green company has made many very significant expenditures in recent years e.g. activation.

Among the reasons Xbox Rising is nothing new, as analysts tell the press IGN. It already happened last year. Pierce Harding-Rolls d’Ampere analysis As noted in his own writing on the subject, the cost of creating and publishing games has risen and they want to make money, plain and simple. Your customers would have to pay more to offset the cost of licensing games in general, as well as the cost of adding a significant annual premium version that was disguised as the latter. Call of Duty.

For its part, Matt Piscatella Noting that the subscription market has stagnated in recent years, the same goes for PlayStation. Spending on video game subscription services fell slightly in 2024 compared to a year ago, and cloud gaming subscription offerings were not enthusiastically received by consumers. As a result, Xbox If you want to achieve your long-term goals, you must change. But there is a limited number of possible changes it is capable of.

Here is part of the statement:

When you need to increase revenue, as Xbox bosses do, you only have a few levers when it comes to Game Pass. It’s volume or performance. And it’s clear that volume growth in both Game Pass Core (formerly Xbox Live Gold) and actual Game Pass has plateaued for some time.

Xbox has done a good job of gradually moving its customers from cheaper Live Gold to Game Pass. But now they have to continue paying for the growing and/or larger divisions created with all these acquisitions. So the new changes are moving Game Pass customers to the higher tiers, while also creating select mid-tier tiers for those who don’t want Day One games.

An analyst pointed out that its price has risen Xbox The aforementioned slowdown in subscription growth alongside current inflation was and remains “inevitable”. So the company needs to increase the average revenue per user ARPUEspecially in an effort to offset sales of new single copies Call of Duty To whom will inevitably lose game pass If the balance is not created, we will likely see further growth next year.

Through: IGN

Author’s Note: Not following the same example we’re still defending ourselves from Nintendo, after all they don’t offer first-run games for free. As for Sony, let’s hope it doesn’t escalate, we already had enough with its little surprises last year.