Game Pass's $7 Price Cut Was Just the First Step

A $7 monthly reduction on Game Pass Ultimate and the removal of future Call of Duty titles from day-one launches grabbed headlines this week, but according to Windows Central, the real restructuring hasn't even started yet. Microsoft sources told the outlet that the longer-term goal is a "pick your own plan" model for Game Pass, where subscribers choose which packages of content they actually want and pay accordingly.

Let's back up. On April 21, Xbox announced that Game Pass Ultimate would drop from $29.99 to $22.99 per month, while PC Game Pass fell from $16.49 to $13.99. The Essential and Premium tiers stayed put at $9.99 and $14.99. Existing subscribers see the lower price on their next billing cycle from April 22 onwards. Alongside the price cuts, Microsoft confirmed that future Call of Duty releases will no longer hit Game Pass on launch day, instead arriving roughly a year later during the following holiday season.

Xbox Gaming CEO Asha Sharma framed the changes as a response to player feedback, stating on X that Game Pass had become "too expensive for too many players" and that the company wants to "better match what matters to players." She also acknowledged internally that making Game Pass more flexible "will take time to test and learn around."

I wrote about the price cut and Call of Duty removal earlier this week, but the customisable plan angle changes the calculus entirely. A cheaper Ultimate tier is nice. A subscription where you strip out Fortnite Crew, Xbox Cloud Gaming, or third-party bundles you never touch and pay less? That's a different product.

What 'Pick Your Own' Could Look Like

Windows Central's report outlines several possibilities Microsoft is considering. Users might be able to remove day-one releases from their plan, drop cloud gaming access, or opt out of bundled services like EA Play or Ubisoft+ to lower their monthly cost. On the other end, players willing to pay more could potentially add content that isn't currently part of any tier. One leaked suggestion even pointed to a Game Pass variant focused exclusively on first-party Microsoft titles. There's also apparently internal discussion about bundling non-gaming services like Netflix into higher-priced plans.

I think this is the most interesting thing Microsoft has done with Game Pass since it launched. The current tier system forces you to pay for a pile of stuff you might never use. Cloud gaming is worthless to someone who only plays on a Series X at home. Fortnite Crew means nothing if you don't play Fortnite. Letting people shed those extras and pay less isn't just consumer-friendly; it's could pull in subscribers who looked at $30 a month and walked away.

But there's an obvious risk. Modular pricing works for cable TV and streaming bundles because those companies have decades of data on what people actually watch. Microsoft would need to price each component so that the à la carte model doesn't cannibalise revenue from people who would have paid for a full tier anyway. If the math doesn't work, either the base price creeps back up or the individual add-ons get priced so aggressively that building your own plan costs more than Ultimate does now. I've seen enough "flexible" pricing models in gaming turn into upsell machines to be cautious here.

The Call of Duty removal is clearly the test case. Pulling one of the biggest franchises in gaming out of day-one access and cutting the price by $7 lets Microsoft measure exactly how many subscribers were there primarily for CoD, and how many stick around for the broader catalogue. If retention holds, it validates the idea that different players value different parts of the service, and that unbundling can work without bleeding subscribers.

Sharma has only been in her role for a short time, and she's already made bigger structural changes to Game Pass than we saw in the previous two years combined. Whether the customisable plan model actually ships or quietly dies in testing is another matter. Microsoft hasn't officially confirmed any of it, and Sharma herself said the flexibility push "will take time." For now, the $7 cut is real and already rolling out to existing subscribers.