The price of Game Pass has more than doubled since the subscription gaming service was first announced, but it might not stay that way. According to The Verge, new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma told staff in an internal memo this week that Game Pass was getting too expensive and needed to evolve to remain flexible.
“Game Pass is central to gaming value on Xbox. It’s also clear that the current model isn’t the final one,” Sharma wrote. “Short term, Game Pass has become too expensive for players, so we need a better value equation. Long term, we will evolve Game Pass into a more flexible system, which will take time to test and learn around.”
Game Pass originally soft-launched in 2017 for just $10 a month. Microsoft later rolled its paid Xbox Live Gold subscription for online gaming into the service, rebranded it as Game Pass Ultimate, and raised the price to $15 a month. It’s since climbed to $30 a month, doubling in just a year’s time following the addition of new Call of Duty games after the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
The memo comes after Windows Central‘s Jez Cordon speculated over the weekend that Microsoft might re-evaluate keeping Call of Duty as part of Game Pass. Without an influx of new subscribers, the company is likely leaving a lot of money on the table by not simply forcing Xbox and PC users to buy the game separately, while also sacrificing customers who would otherwise pay for Game Pass if it wasn’t so expensive each month.
Sharma reportedly told staff she was aware of the online rumors and would discuss the issue at more length in subsequent weeks. It was previously reported that Microsoft is exploring ad-supported tiers of Game Pass to subsidize cheaper plans, as most TV streaming companies do. In fact, Sharma met with Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters last month, where the two discussed, among other things, what it might look like to bundle Game Pass with Netflix.
The new Microsoft Gaming CEO has previously claimed that nothing is off the table when it comes to re-evaluating the Xbox strategy left to her by her predecessors, including outgoing Xbox veteran Phil Spencer. Still, it remains unclear just how much the tech giant will empower her to do what needs to be done in order to reinvigorate the third-place console gaming platform.
