After a few years in a console’s life cycle, its common to see dips in price for its older games and hardware, but in 2025, the opposite has been true. The latest culprit of the rising cost of gaming is Xbox Game Pass, which we learned today would be getting new features, but a massive increase in monthly fees. Ultimate, the highest tier of the service, will cost 50 percent more, going from $19.99 a month to $29.99 a month. A breakdown of the new tiers is included below.
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Game Pass Essential (formerly Core)- $9.99 a month
- 50+ games now playable on PC, console, and cloud
- Unlimited Cloud Gaming
- In-game benefits, including for Riot Games
- Online console multiplayer
- Play and earn up to $25 a year in the Store with Rewards
Game Pass Premium (formerly Standard) – $14.99 a month
- 200+ games now playable on PC, console, and cloud
- New Xbox-published games within a year of launch
- Unlimited cloud gaming with shorter wait times
- In-game benefits, including for Riot Games
- Online console multiplayer
- Play and earn up to $50 a year in the Store with Rewards
Game Pass Ultimate – $29.99 a month
- 400+ games now playable on PC, console, and cloud
- 75+ day one games a year, including all Xbox-published games day one
- Ubisoft+ Classics and EA Play included, with Fortnite Crew coming in November
- Unlimited cloud gaming at our best quality, with the shortest wait times
- In-game benefits, including for Riot Games
- Online console multiplayer
- Play and earn up to $100 a year in the Store with Rewards
Xbox justifies the increase with a new lineup of upgrades. An Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription now includes Ubisoft+ Classics (a $7/month fee that includes access to select Ubisoft games) and Fortnite Crew (which offers monthly skins and V-Bucks), along with an upgraded version of Xbox’s cloud gaming service. It also retains its previous benefits, including day 1 releases, a library of 400 games, EA Play, and online gaming.
Lower tiers, however, are relatively unchanged, save for their names: Game Pass Standard is now Game Pass Premium, but remains $14.99 a month, while Game Pass Core, now Game Pass Essential, is still $9.99. New games also come to each service today; you can read that full list here.
Just last year, Game Pass Ultimate increased in price from $16.99 to its current $19.99, and that change was signaled two months in advance – these latest changes go into effect today. This also comes following last week’s news that Xbox’s ROG Ally handhelds will be $599.99 and $999.99, and two weeks after we learned Xbox consoles are getting their second price increase this year.
