Xbox Slashes Game Pass Prices, Pulls Call of Duty from Day O

A $7 monthly price cut to Game Pass Ultimate, effective immediately, and the end of day-one Call of Duty launches on the service. That's the twin announcement Microsoft dropped today in a post on Xbox Wire, and it reads like the clearest signal yet that new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is steering the ship in a very different direction than her predecessor.

Game Pass Ultimate drops from $29.99 to $22.99 per month in the US, and from £22.99 to £16.99 in the UK. PC Game Pass falls from $16.49 to $13.99 (£13.49 to £10.99 in the UK). In exchange, future Call of Duty releases won't hit Game Pass at launch. Instead, they'll arrive "during the following holiday season (about a year later)," according to Microsoft. Existing CoD titles already on the service stay put.

I think this is the right call, even if it stings for CoD subscribers. According to Bloomberg, Xbox gave up more than $300 million in console and PC sales of Call of Duty last year because players were accessing it through Game Pass instead. Black Ops 7 landed as the fifth best-selling premium game in the US, the lowest a CoD title has ranked in nearly 20 years, with launch sales reportedly down more than 60% in some markets. The day-one model was bleeding the franchise dry. Sharma herself wrote on X today: "Game Pass Ultimate has become too expensive for too many players… We'll keep learning and evolving Game Pass to better match what matters to players."

It's worth remembering this price cut doesn't fully reverse the 50% hike Microsoft pushed through just six months ago. Game Pass Ultimate was $19.99 before that October increase, so we're still paying more than we were a year ago. But the direction matters. Sharma has been signalling this since taking over from Phil Spencer in February, calling the current model something that "isn't the final one." Game Pass Essential and Premium tiers stay at $9.99 and $14.99 respectively, unchanged. For anyone who doesn't play Call of Duty, this is a straightforward win; for those who do, the monthly savings from the price cut will roughly cover buying the game outright over a year.