I did some research on microsft’s history of backtracking and boy would we have to wait a while for it do come in a meanifull way(Between 6 months to a year from what i have seen)
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They have until November 4th when it goes to full effect as in everyone gets it. They can rethink and change something, or nothing at all.
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This whole thing is so interesting on so many levels. I like to think xbox is always making decisions based on their long term goals, but they do seem to flail sometimes (doubling gold, $80 USD games, changing gamepass structure twice in about a year). But I do think this change is different. From my observations over the years, xbox ran their business within our general notion of how the console business should operate (sony for example). But recently, maybe over the last couple of years, MS seems to have broken off and decided they are going to run the business how they think is best even if it breaks those old console rules. First party games on all platforms. Hardware no longer loss leaders. Premium, and I mean very premium sub services, focus on streaming, focus on PC. And I like it all. I like change. I’ve been around for every hardware gen and change is refreshing and exciting.
If I’m being honest, at $20 USD, the gamepass value scale was leaning in the consumer’s favor. And we all loved it. Now at $30 USD, it seems more balanced. It sucks, but I understand it. Over the years, we went from $1 gold conversions to $30/mo.
The premium tier is now the main tier. I bet they discussed just getting rid of ultimate outright. But figured they would just adjust the price to a point that both makes them money and funnels people to premium. A year from now, if ultimate still has the majority of users, they adjust it higher again.
Last thing on my mind about this is the timing of the new gamepass prices. when is the right time to do something like this when they are a year or two away from launching their next hardware. I would have thought you do this when you launch next gen since you are dealing with a somewhat clean slate. But now that I have seen the reactions on this, dumping this news now makes sense. If they would have done this with new hardware, everyone would just be talking about $30/mo ultimate and it would be distracting and overshadowed the new hardware. So how early before a new gen do you do this is the interesting part. My theory is this price hike now has 7 months to normalize with people, and they announce the new hardware at the June showcase and will be released sometime in 2027.
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I think many of us are “hoping” for 2026. At this point I just want the bad Xbox vibes to stop.
I’m with you on the bad vibes. I’m very tired the dog piling. All of it. Everywhere you turn something is getting dog piled on. Not just xbox either. Seems like some games are always on some group’s shitlist. I’d rather talk about what I like than don’t like. Clearly people love negativity, though.
I wish the podcast would stop talking about it too. Half the podcast anymore is talking about what others are saying about xbox. Like, I don’t care what twitter or resetera or whoever is saying. The podcast is just amplifying and spreading it by talking about it over and over.
Back on topic. I think we are just in the middle of xbox tying up a bunch of loose ends before the next console. Get the partner handheld out, firm up the gamepass strategy, resolve the unification of xbox/pc operating systems. Prob 10 things I’m not thinking of. There is something to be said about launching in 2026 though with all those legacy titles launching the same year. But I think they can still capitalizing on it with announcing next hardware in 2026 vs actually launching it. But who knows.
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If we look at it at face value here, Game Pass Premium is actually cheaper than Playstation Plus Premium, has pretty much the same features, like hundreds of games, cloud streaming, older games from previous generations, with the only difference being the discounts are out on Xbox and instead replaced with earned reward points. I’d actually say Premium on Xbox is actually a better value as you have all first party games in there except for COD of course, available within a year of release, which is something you don’t get on Playstation Plus Premium.
So as the end of the day, Ultimate is really in a world of its own in terms of pricing, but also in terms of what it’s offering
So why is it that the internet thinks Playstation Plus Premium is good value, but that Xbox Game Pass Premium isn’t?
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I think Jesse talked about it a few times and sadly talking about the games doesn’t give clicks/bring viewers, it’s all about the drama and the stuff that is surrounding the games. I am sure the Xboxera team wants to talk about the games which is the only good thing that is happening in this generation since the start (quality is quite high in the software side) but most of the people watching/listening don’t care about that, it’s a paradox that the gaming community cares more about the drama than the games themselves but it is what it is. 
I can totally understand what you’re saying and I would too prefer to see every podcast be positive (though Xboxera tries to remain positive as much as possible) with the main topic the games themselves but this doesn’t cut it when you want to be successful in the YT space so I totally understand why everyone is focusing more on the news than the games. That being said the Xboxera podcasts are great with thoughtful opinions and takes (well besides Nick’s hot takes when he talks about his game preferences 
) plus some awesome content like the interviews that the guys are doing with various industry people…the Xboxera podcasts are the only ones that I listen to every week.
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All these posts and articles online about how Xbox is done for and so is Game Pass are just silly. Yes the price increase sucks, but it’s impossible to say how bad it really is, I guess we’ll see how many cancelations happen in the coming months or so? If it does get bad I would hope MS rethinks the whole thing, really don’t want GP gone.
Not taking the Xbox dead nonsense seriously at all, that’s been such a meme for so long now. Genuinely silly.
You’re absolutely right. We’re overjoyed when we can just talk about the games, honestly you have no idea. 
I too hate the drama… But where in most circumstances, I would ignore it, or at least pay it little regard… Things are happening now within Microsoft that signal huge upheaval and change for the brand. And possibly, us as a site. We really do need to start thinking about our future in terms of what we’re going to do to navigate it, and navigate it well for all of you too 
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Microsoft is trash at marketing, but that’s hardly news at this point. If I were them then I’d have announced the cloud gaming changes (adding it to essential (formerly core) and Premium (formerly standard) while boosting it on ultimate and exiting beta) and that essential and premium will gain access to pc versions (perfect for the Xbox Ally release). They could throw in removing paid multiplayer for good measure and that way they’d probably get away with a stealth increase in the price for core/essential. This would mostly just be seen as a good thing and might even lead to new subscribers who want to check out cloud gaming or want a cheaper small PC tier.
Then sometime in December announce or tease an ad tier for game pass. And start testing shortly after. Save the big price increase for ultimate (if they’re set on it) for next year, ideally like February. Make it clear that Ultimate is for the hardcore gamers who game a lot and want the biggest library possible.
Premium really is basically what Ultimate started out as in like 2020, but just more tame (first party in a year). Most people should still love it, but because they were all announced at the same time everything (all media coverage) has gone to the biggest price increase with Ultimate. No one is noticing any of the improvements Standard has gotten and now it just doesn’t matter. They could have rolled out these changes, but they didn’t. So now like a vacuum the Ultimate change is just funneling all the Xbox hate and no light is allowed to escape. People who don’t even game are complaining at the most expensive gamepass tier costing $30, but Microsoft should want people to talk about how the CHEAPEST game pass tier now includes cloud gaming which lowers the paywall to play Xbox games without a game console or gaming PC from $20 to $10.
That’s the biggest blunder to me here. No one is talking about cloud gaming exiting Beta or it being cheaper or all tiers including PC games, when ALL of those things seem like perfect moves for the Xbox Ally launch. Or just in general how Xbox has always talked about reaching the billions of mobile gamers, well now they have a $10 cloud gaming option, and yet all the news is going to Ultimate’s price increase.
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The changes do suck big time for me. I loved day 1 XGS titles, the fantastic indie selection and the occasional third-party surprise on Game Pass. What they‘re adding to Ultimate isn‘t interesting to me, I don‘t care about Fortnite and Call of Duty, and while I like Ubisoft games, they are VERY long and cheap on sales so pretty easy to add to your permanent library. Give me what I want for 19,99 EUR instead of 27,99 EUR and we‘re talking…
In general, Xbox has had so many shifts and turns that I just can‘t take seriosusly whatever they say. Great value (consoles & Game Pass), great hardware and interesting features like BC, Play Anywhere and FPS Boost were what Xbox stood for. Now the direction of future hardware is uncertain, new software features outside of cloud streaming are rare, and the value for console prices & Game Pass (Ultimate) subscriptions are a lot worse. It just sucks, man. I‘ve cancelled Ultimate.
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I just keep seeing negative stuff everywhere though, like people saying this is their last console or how they’ve cancelled outright because of the price increase, but again, like why do people keep acting like Ultimate is the only available tier?
I’m so tired of all the bad faith arguments and double standards. Like if Xbox is pushed out and only becomes PC because of all the years of negativity piling up from the press, I know I’ll stick around, but most people I know who aren’t already on PC won’t be able to afford that and will most likely end up playing on PS6 if it’s much cheaper.
I think going for 25$ without Fortnite Crew might have been better to differentiate Day 1 and COD while getting more money from a majority.
And circling back to the rumour of no next gen hardware, including Crew to get the causals, COD, all day 1 games and a huge library does make sense I guess if you really are trying to spin from being a hardware manufacturer to a cloud gaming only company. And the AMD chips with BC would still be necessary for their cloud infrastructure in the end even if they don’t plan to sell them to us. Unless of course Xbox plans to go full xcloud with these new Gamepass tiers being a foreshadowing of what will happen and you’ll just end up buying a prebuilt PC or handheld with an Xbox sticker on it saying it supports Xbox games.
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Not to say the price increase is justified, but I do like the point system with Ultimate on at the very least. I guess the idea is it’s treating like a credit card with perks or store memberships.
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This is a really good point (plus the ubi games and more day 1 games). I think the mystery of whatever they are doing with this price hike lays here. If goal to increase their gp revenue, then just raise the price a little. If all things stayed the same but price it to $25, the blowback would be a lot less than it is. So why try to solve that blowback problem by adding more games to it which then forces you to increase to $30 USD?
Could this be a cloud streaming hardware fee buried in the new price? From what I understand GFN top tier is $20/mo just for the hardware portion. PS premium is $18 USD/mo and can only stream owned ps5 games? We often forget cloud steaming has a cost. And they removed the beta tag too which lines up with this.
So after this rambling, I’m thinking the jump to $30 is prob to pay for their data center upgrades. And not just today’s upgrades but future upgrades if we assume they will be on some kind of rolling schedule as there is an assumption the next gen of xbox could have more frequent upgrade paths (as it lives more in the pc world).
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I havent had a chance to use Xcloud lately as i dont currently have a gamepass sub but i have used streaming on Playstation and holy crap has it gotten good. There was a time years ago when i had to sell all my gaming stuff so when i came back i decided to dabble with the various cloud services and Stadia and Geforce Now were good (not perfect but decent), and there was a big gap between them and Xcloud and PS streaming (too much lag, hitching and bad resolution). But whatever work that PS did is paying off and im sure the same of Xcloud now that it is out of beta and has 1440p options and whatnot. And i remember reading somewhere that people at Xbox were surpised at how many people were using xcloud or something. Its defiitely going to be a big thing in the future for people with even halfway decent internet (it also helps for someone like me that doesnt have a crap ton of storage space on my consoles so i dont want to commit to downloading/storing 100+GB games and just wants to play them for a little bit). Probably alot of people who also dont want to spend hundreds (thousands??) on future gaming hardware and would rather spend $30 getting a decent gaming experience streaming on PC/mobile/dedicated streaming stick etc
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I like hearing stories about people’s streaming experience. It really makes me think, next gen’s ‘series s’ is the streaming option. I have read Matt Piscatella basically define console hardware people as the older side of the gaming public. Curious to see if the new and younger generation picks up streaming games as the norm. If true, xbox’s strategy here is sound.
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The price MS charges per month for streaming is definitely good if you compare it to GeForce now. The only problem is that they need to bring the quality up and maybe latency a bit, especially with faster paced games like Ninja Gaiden.
My feeling is that they can’t really do too much considering the hardware scalability of using Series S or Series X I think split into several instances. Once they hit that new AMD hardware that’s more akin to a PC I feel like they’ll be able to scale much better at a cheaper price and probably be able to offer better quality at that point along with better latency with that new wifi capable controller. This is something that I don’t think Sony will be able to follow if they stick to the more traditional console model and MS won’t be able to match Nvidia but will most likely be able to close the gap a bit more.
I have mostly used it for Final Fantasy Tactics lately and I only get 1080p with 10-15Mbits of bit rate and while it looks fine on a 24 inch screen, I think they need a bit more for someone that plays on a TV.
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I recently tried it with visions of Mana and I think streaming will replace all my single player (and casual multiplayer (non competitive)) downloads. There was still audio crackling and some lag during cutscenes, but for the most part it’s been really smooth. I’ve also been playing Final Fantasy 16 this way. I wouldn’t play a game like Expedition 33 where timing is everything, but if it’s a game where I can survive some lag then it’s great. Though I also have really good internet.
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That’s the thing, I think it needs to move forward enough to replace even timing critical games. Like why can’t I play Overwatch on this for example? The other night I did my Fortnite Festival dailies on it and I missed a lot more notes than I normally would. I still did decent all things considered, but I know if I had been playing Ninja Gaiden 2 Black for example, I’d probably have thrown the controller around a few times lol
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Yes to everything, but also why aren’t Overwatch and Diablo on cloud? They’d be perfect for it? Well at least Diablo. Overwatch I’d also play because I just play casually. Like quick play matches in Halo Infinite on the cloud are dope. Fiesta is super fun on the cloud. Arcade matches in Overwatch would be too. Give me total mayhem on my smartphone.