Xbox Cuts Game Pass Price, New “Call of Duty”

Microsoft has announced that it is cutting the price of its gaming subscription service – Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

Currently priced at $29.99 per month for the Ultimate tier service, it will be reduced to $22.99 per month. PC Game Pass will also drop from $16.49 to $13.99.

However, those cuts will come at a slight cost. That cost? Future “Call of Duty” games won’t launch on Game Pass on Day One – instead, they will be added a year later, following being available at full price retail.

Microsoft added “Call of Duty” to its Game Pass service starting with ‘Black Ops 6’ in 2024. Reports suggest the company lost several hundred million in sales by doing that.

This follows on from Microsoft Gaming boss Asha Sharma sending a memo to Xbox staff in mid-April stating that Game Pass was getting too expensive.

Game Pass, a Netflix-style streaming model for games, has been the heart of Xbox’s strategy for the last nine years.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella previously claimed in a conference call that Game Pass brought in nearly $5 billion in the 2025 financial year.