Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass lost millions of subscribers after the company raised the Ultimate tier by 50% in October 2025, a stark reversal for a service that had been one of the company’s most visible gaming bets. Microsoft later moved to cut the monthly Ultimate price from $29.99 to $22.99 after the backlash.
The latest discussion is landing now because the service’s subscriber base has become the clearest test of whether Microsoft can push prices higher without pushing players away. Xbox Game Pass was long pitched as a go-to destination for Xbox fans on Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S and Xbox on PC, and in February 2024 Microsoft said it had at least 34 million users. By July 2025, revenue from the service was reportedly nearing $5 billion for the first time, making the October price move a sharper gamble than a routine adjustment.
Matthew Ball, speaking during a live taping with The Game Business, said Microsoft shed millions of subscribers over the span of a few months after the increase. Microsoft confirmed in October that Ultimate would rise from $19.99 a month to $29.99, a change that added $120 a year for subscribers. The company also tied the higher price to promised extras, including more big games such as Hogwarts Legacy, but the scale of the reported losses suggests the hike landed harder than expected.
That is where Microsoft’s own recent framing complicates the picture. Asha Sharma said the company had been able to reset Game Pass after an eight-month decline, and that it had returned to growth and was expanding retention. She also said Microsoft was getting closer to its players and community again. Put next to Ball’s estimate of millions lost, the two accounts point to a service that may have stabilized only after a painful stretch, not one that absorbed the increase cleanly.
There is also a second fault line in the business model. Microsoft later confirmed that Call of Duty games would be pulled from the service’s day-one release plan, a shift that changes one of the strongest arguments for paying for the top tier. For subscribers weighing $22.99 a month against the service’s lineup, that matters as much as the price cut itself, because the value proposition is no longer just about access. It is about what arrives first, and what no longer does.
Microsoft has lowered the price, but it has not disclosed the exact number of subscribers it lost, leaving the size of the damage open even as it tries to steady the service. The company may be past the initial backlash, but the question that remains is simpler: whether Xbox Game Pass can keep growing at a higher price once the early anger fades.
