Xbox Game Pass apparently lost “millions of subscribers” when it raised its prices by 50 percent last fall, according to Xbox’s chief strategy officer, Matthew Ball.
This comes from an interview that The Game Business‘ Chris Dring did with Ball at Summer Game Fest, with the quote being reposted by Geoff Keighley earlier today:
Matthew Ball says Xbox shed “millions of subscribers” when the Gamepass price increased 50 percent in Fall 2025. pic.twitter.com/ESCr1iOEV8
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) June 8, 2026
We unfortunately don’t yet have the full context of this quote, nor do we know how many subscribers exactly were lost. In mid-2025, it was thought that the service had over 35 million subscribers, though that number was never officially confirmed. The service was confirmed to be at 34 million subscribers in February of 2024.
Last October, Xbox increased the price of its Game Pass Ultimate plan by 50 percent, alongside a rework of its cheaper Game Pass tiers. This move also took place just a little over a year after it raised prices in 2024. The loss of millions of subscribers explains why new CEO Asha Sharma dropped the price (though not back to 2025 levels) this past April, alongside the announcement that future Call of Duty games would no longer launch into the service.
Xbox Game Pass has had a pretty steep fall from grace over the years, having initially enjoyed wide popularity as a relatively inexpensive service with a large number of good and desirable games on it, but gradually becoming less and less appealing amid slow price increases and a slower drip of alluring games. It’s still getting a lot of really solid new games added to it every month, but has yet to return to the heights of a few years ago when it was essentially the main reason to own an Xbox, largely due to the price.