{"id":76059,"date":"2026-04-21T14:46:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T18:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=76059"},"modified":"2026-04-21T15:36:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T19:36:25","slug":"todays-game-pass-change-is-a-great-one-the-next-one-will-hurt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=76059","title":{"rendered":"Today&#8217;s Game Pass Change Is A Great One. The Next One Will Hurt."},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">Starting today, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers enjoy something few ever get to experience in the age of the subscription model: a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/game-pass-gets-price-drop-new-call-of-duty-games-no-longer-included\/1100-6539523\/\">price drop<\/a>. It&#8217;s been six months since the price of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/game-pass-price-hike-announced-now-costs-30-month-for-ultimate\/1100-6535138\/\">Game Pass Ultimate went up to $30 a month<\/a>, but under the new Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma, the cost is unexpectedly falling back down to $23 a month. It&#8217;s not without caveats&#8211;this tier no longer includes Call of Duty entries on their respective launch days&#8211;but for the likely millions of players who subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate and don&#8217;t play Call of Duty, this is only a good thing.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This news comes less than a week after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/microsoft-considering-these-major-changes-to-game-pass-after-ceo-said-its-too-expensive-report\/1100-6539449\/\">an internal memo written by Sharma spoke to how the price of Game Pass had risen too much<\/a>. In the wake of today&#8217;s official price reduction, the &#8220;leaked&#8221; internal memo feels more like an intended tease, otherwise known as a controlled leak. That&#8217;s all fine by me. It&#8217;s a tried-and-true means of communicating your brand&#8217;s ideas to the public, and it&#8217;s at least interesting to begin to see what shape Xbox will take under Sharma. But controlled leak or not, today&#8217;s headline feels like it guarantees another major change is coming, and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Starting today, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers enjoy something few ever get to experience in the age of the subscription model: a price drop. It&#8217;s been six months since the price of Game Pass Ultimate went up to $30 a month, but under the new Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma, the cost is unexpectedly falling back&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":76061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external","brand-gamespot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76059"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76059"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76062,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76059\/revisions\/76062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/76061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}