Six months ago, I opened my email and watched Game Pass Ultimate jump to $30 a month. Today I opened it and watched the same service drop to $22.99, with one big asterisk attached.
That’s the kind of whiplash Xbox subscribers are getting used to at this point.
Microsoft announced today, April 21, 2026, that Game Pass Ultimate is dropping from $29.99 to $22.99 a month, a 23% cut. PC Game Pass is going from $16.49 to $13.99. Essential and Premium are staying at $9.99 and $14.99, respectively. The new prices kick in at your next renewal date.
Here’s the part that’s going to split the room: starting this year, new Call of Duty games will no longer hit Game Pass on launch day. They’ll show up about a year after release, landing in the service during the following holiday season. Current Call of Duty titles in the library are staying put.
Let me break down what actually happened, how we got here, and whether this is the deal we’ve been asking for or just Microsoft finally reading the room after losing it.
What Just Changed
The full rundown from today’s Xbox Wire post:
- Game Pass Ultimate: $29.99 → $22.99/month
- PC Game Pass: $16.49 → $13.99/month
- Essential and Premium: Unchanged at $9.99 and $14.99
- Future Call of Duty titles: Not included at launch, added about a year later
- Existing Call of Duty titles: Staying in the library
New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who took over from Phil Spencer in February after coming in from Meta, put it bluntly on X: “Game Pass Ultimate has become too expensive for too many players.”
She’s not wrong. In late 2025, Microsoft raised the subscription by roughly 50% (from $19.99 to $29.99/month), sparking immediate backlash from players who felt the service was losing its “best deal in gaming” reputation. Cancellations followed. Reddit got loud. Microsoft’s socials turned into a graveyard of “lower the price” replies.
Now they’ve cut $7 off. It’s still more than Ultimate cost last summer, but it’s moving in the right direction.
How Game Pass Got So Expensive
If you’ve been a Game Pass subscriber for a few years, you’ve watched the price creep up in a way that feels almost engineered to make you forget where things started.
Here’s the timeline:
- June 2019: Game Pass Ultimate launches at $14.99/month
- August 2023: Bumps to $16.99
- July 2024: Jumps to $19.99, new “Standard” tier introduced without day-one games
- October 2025: Big shake-up. $29.99/month. Tiers rebranded to Essential, Premium, and Ultimate
- April 2026: Drops back to $22.99/month
The original Game Pass Ultimate subscription launched at $15 per month in June 2019, rising to $17 per month by June 2024. When Microsoft pulled the trigger on the October 2025 jump, it represented a massive increase for people who’d signed up during the Netflix-for-games era.
The $30/month version came with cloud gaming rolled into all tiers and a pretty incredible day-one lineup. Titles like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Blue Prince, Doom: The Dark Ages, Hollow Knight: Silksong, The Alters, and The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered all hit the service in the months after the hike.
But the math stopped working for a lot of people. The average TAG reader isn’t blasting through 30 games a year. If you’re a parent or someone with a real job, you’re maybe finishing 3-5 big titles annually. At $360 a year, Game Pass Ultimate was asking you to pay the price of 5 full-price games just to rent them.
The backlash was loud enough that Microsoft couldn’t ignore it. So here we are.
Why Call of Duty Is the Sacrifice
The Activision Blizzard deal is the whole story here.
Microsoft spent $75.4 billion in 2023 to buy Activision, and the biggest prize was Call of Duty. The pitch to investors was simple: put Call of Duty on Game Pass, watch subscriptions explode, print money forever.
That’s not quite how it played out.
Xbox reportedly lost $300 million in Call of Duty sales from 2023 to 2024, with over 80% of all CoD sales coming from PlayStation, indicating Xbox and PC players were not buying the game.
Think about that for a second. Microsoft put the biggest annual shooter on the planet into Game Pass, and most Call of Duty money was still coming from Sony’s platform. Xbox and PC players who might have paid $70 for Modern Warfare III or Black Ops 6 just downloaded it on their Game Pass subscription they were already paying for.
That’s a devastating trade for Microsoft. They were basically subsidizing the game for their own platform holders. PlayStation kept cashing full-price checks the whole time.
Microsoft’s finance chief, Amy Hood, announced an unspecified impairment charge in the gaming business, which expanded in 2023 with the $75.4 billion acquisition of “Call of Duty” publisher Activision Blizzard. Translation: they’re writing down some of what they paid for Activision.
Pulling Call of Duty off day-one Game Pass is Microsoft trying to recover that $70 purchase revenue from their own platform. You want the new CoD when it drops? You’re buying it. If you wait a year, you can play it on Game Pass.
The Community Actually Asked for This
Here’s something interesting that got buried in the coverage.
Jez Corden from Windows Central put up a poll on X a few weeks ago asking users if they’d prefer Xbox Game Pass to get a price cut in exchange for the removal of future Call of Duty titles. Almost 75% said they would prefer the lower price, with less than 10% saying they like things the way they are now.
75% is not a close margin. That’s a landslide.
Most Game Pass subscribers aren’t buying the service for Call of Duty. They’re buying it for the variety. Call of Duty fans, by and large, just buy the new CoD every year at full price. They don’t need Game Pass to play it.
Xbox and Microsoft leadership clearly saw this data and made a rational decision. If the majority of your subscribers don’t care about the one game costing you the most money, cut the loss.
That’s probably the right call. It’s a quiet admission that putting Call of Duty on Game Pass at launch was never the slam dunk the Activision deal was sold as.
What This Means for Average Gamers
If you’re the kind of gamer we talk to at TAG, someone with limited time, a job, kids, maybe all three, here’s the practical breakdown.
You’re winning if:
- You play Game Pass for variety, not for Call of Duty
- You were about to cancel over the $30 price
- You bounce around between different genres every few weeks
- You like smaller day-one releases like Hollow Knight: Silksong or Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- You’re into upcoming first-party hits like Forza Horizon 6 or Fable
You’re losing if:
- Call of Duty is the main reason you subscribe
- You wanted to play new CoD on launch night without paying $70
- You’re a multiplayer purist who only plays the latest CoD and nothing else
For most TAG readers, this is a straight upgrade. $7 less a month is real money across a year, and skipping the newest Call of Duty on day one probably isn’t going to change your gaming life. You’re more likely to be playing Elden Ring Nightreign or grinding your way through Hollow Knight: Silksong than dropping 4 hours into the new CoD campaign anyway.
Is Game Pass Ultimate Worth $22.99?
At $22.99/month, you’re looking at $275.88 a year.
That’s still a lot. But let’s put it next to the alternatives.
A new AAA game is $70. A special edition is $100. If Game Pass saves you from buying 4 big releases a year, it’s already paid for itself. And the day-one slate for 2026 is legitimately stacked.
Fable, Forza Horizon 6, Gears of War: E-Day, and High on Life 2 are just some of the games confirmed to be coming to Game Pass next year, and Forza Horizon 6 drops next month. That one is a big deal since it’s not on PlayStation 5 at launch. If you’ve been eyeing the new Forza, subscribing for a month or two to play it is cheaper than buying the game.
Where it gets complicated is if you’re someone who plays 1-2 games a year. At that point, buying the games you actually want outright is still cheaper. Game Pass has always been a value play for people who consume a lot of different games.
At $22.99, the math is friendlier than it was six months ago. For our audience, people who want to try stuff without committing $70, this is probably a green light to come back if you canceled.
What’s Next for Game Pass
This price cut is a reset, not a victory lap.
Xbox Game Pass is struggling for growth, and it isn’t delivering on that initial dream Microsoft had back in 2018 when it started putting brand new titles into the service. Subscriber numbers have been flat. Microsoft’s gaming revenue came in below internal projections last quarter. The impairment charge on the Activision deal is not a great look.
Asha Sharma is new to the job. She’s trying to stabilize the ship. Expect more changes. Possibly more flexibility in how you can bundle Game Pass. Possibly tighter alignment with specific games or franchises.
For now, though, you’re getting cheaper Game Pass. Just don’t expect to play the next Call of Duty on it the week it launches.
The best-case read on today’s news is that Microsoft is finally listening. The worst-case read is that they’re panicking after overplaying their hand last October. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
Either way, for average gamers who’ve been priced out of Game Pass, today’s announcement is a small win. Take it.
What do you think about the price drop? Are you coming back to Game Pass, or is the Call of Duty delay a dealbreaker? Hop into our Discord and let us know. We’d rather talk about real gaming life than doomscroll Xbox Twitter.
📌 Save Xbox Game Pass Dropped to $22.99, But Call of Duty Is the Catch to your backlog
Track every game you play, rate what's worth finishing, skip the overhyped ones.
