Even Microsoft Doesn't Know How to Fix Game Pass

Six months ago, Microsoft hiked the price of every Xbox Game Pass tier and told subscribers they were getting "more value, more benefits, and more great games across every plan." Now the company's own gaming CEO is reportedly saying the service has become too expensive. That's not a pivot. That's an admission that the October 2025 price increase was a mistake, delivered without any clear idea of what comes next.

According to a report from The Verge's Notepad newsletter published on April 16, Asha Sharma, who replaced Phil Spencer as CEO of Microsoft Gaming in February, is fielding several internal ideas for Game Pass's future. Among them: a new tier that would only include first-party games from Microsoft-owned studios, and a debate over whether future Call of Duty titles should continue launching on Game Pass day one. Neither of these is a concrete plan. They're options being discussed, which tells you everything about where Game Pass sits right now.

I think the most revealing detail here isn't any single proposal. It's the absence of direction. Game Pass was Microsoft's clearest strategic advantage in the console space for years. It was the reason people bought into the Xbox ecosystem, the thing that made a $500 console purchase feel like it came with a safety net. At $29.99 a month for Ultimate, that pitch has eroded badly, and the leadership vacuum at the top means there's no one steering the ship toward a fix.

The Call of Duty Question

Pulling Call of Duty off day-one Game Pass would be a seismic shift, and not in a good way. Microsoft spent $68.7 billion acquiring Activision Blizzard, and the implicit promise to subscribers was that the biggest franchise in gaming would be part of the deal. If that changes, it doesn't just affect one game; it signals that no first-party title is safe on the service. Why would anyone pay a premium monthly fee when the flagship franchise might not be included? I can already picture the Reddit threads.

A first-party-only tier is a more interesting idea, but the pricing would make or break it. If Microsoft charges more than what Game Pass Ultimate cost before the October hike, it's dead on arrival. Players aren't going to pay $20-plus a month for access to a library that doesn't include third-party games, no matter how good the Bethesda and Xbox Game Studios catalogue is. The whole appeal of Game Pass was breadth. Narrow the library and you need to slash the price to match.

Meanwhile, the service is still doing what it's always done: rotating games in and out. Nine titles are leaving Game Pass at the end of April, including Hunt: Showdown 1896, Citizen Sleeper, and Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2. On the other side, Hades II arrived on April 14 as a day-one Game Pass addition and is already sitting at a 98 on Metacritic for Xbox Series X. A game that good landing on the service should be a victory lap moment. Instead, it's background noise to a story about whether the whole model is sustainable.

What frustrates me most is that Microsoft had years to get ahead of this. The warning signs were there when the first price increases hit, when the ad-supported tier rumours started circulating, when the Standard tier launched without day-one games. Each move chipped away at what made Game Pass special, and none of them came with a coherent long-term vision. Now Sharma is essentially starting from scratch, trying to figure out what Game Pass should be while subscribers are already paying inflated prices for a product whose identity is in flux.

The Verge's report also references Project Helix as a "North Star" for Xbox's broader strategy, but Sharma reportedly hasn't made firm decisions about how Game Pass fits into it. Polygon noted that they've contacted Microsoft for comment and haven't received a response. For a service that 34 million people subscribe to, the silence from Redmond is striking. Game Pass needs a clear, public roadmap, not leaked internal brainstorming sessions. Until that happens, subscribers are paying more for a product that even its own parent company can't define.