Poll suggests majority of Xbox Game Pass subscribers have canceled, Premium & Essential tiers not good enough
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It’s probably fair to say that most gamers at this point have heard about the Xbox Game Pass price changes. If not, then now you have. Microsoft has restructured the popular game subscription service into three tiers. The most notable change is a 50% price increase (in USD) for the Ultimate tier, jumping from $19.99 to $29.99. Fans have turned to canceling their subscriptions, though it’s worth checking out the list of unaffected regions “for now” before you make a decision. You can still grab a $20 code from some retailers too, presumably while stocks last.
Since Microsoft seldom releases subscriber numbers, we recently ran a poll to figure out what portion of gamers have decided to pull the plug – three quarters of respondents say they have canceled, or plan to do so soon. It’s worth noting that PC-only ‘PC Game Pass’ has also been bumped up, by 40%, now costing $16.49 per month.
Premium and Essential tiers not good enough for the price?
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass remain the only ways to get day-one releases, but with the considerable price bumps for these tiers, it’s hard to imagine they will remain as popular as before. The cheaper Premium and Essential models also prove to be unpopular alternatives; according to our poll (at the time of writing), just 7% of gamers will continue using the $14.99 Premium tier, while 8% are happy with Essential for $9.99 a month. For comparison, 76% say they are canceling altogether.
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So, it’s obvious that the console crowd is shaken up by the Xbox Game Pass overhaul. As for PC-only gamers, Microsoft didn’t make it immediately clear what was happening with PC Game Pass in its initial announcement, but we can see it still exists – it’s just a little bit hidden (see below).
We failed to mention PC-only subscribers in our original poll, but we’ll keep it up regardless if you still want to contribute. Moving forward, we’re keen to see if Microsoft makes any comment on the subscriber numbers for its popular Xbox Game Pass service. In Feburary 2024, Xbox president Sarah Bond revealed there were 34 million subscribers, but it’s easy to imagine that figure has changed over one-and-a-half years later.
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