Xbox cuts Game Pass prices, delays day-one Call of Duty access

Xbox is lowering the price of Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, but it’s also changing one of the biggest perks tied to the service. New Call of Duty games will no longer hit those tiers on launch day. Instead, Xbox says they’ll be added around the following holiday season, roughly a year later.

According to the official post, Game Pass Ultimate is dropping from $29.99 to $22.99 per month, while PC Game Pass is going from $16.49 to $13.99. Existing Call of Duty titles already in players’ libraries won’t be removed.

The move follows internal comments from Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma, who reportedly said Game Pass had “become too expensive for players.” Xbox repeated that basic reasoning publicly, saying the change is meant to address player feedback and make the subscription setup more flexible.

The new pricing still doesn’t fully undo last year’s increase. Before the October 2025 hike, Game Pass cost $19.99 on console and $11.99 on PC.

Call of Duty became a major part of the Game Pass pitch in 2024, when Microsoft started bringing the series into the subscription lineup. That helped drive sign-ups at the time, but Xbox now appears to be rethinking the value balance between subscription growth and full-price annual releases.

Microsoft hasn’t shared fresh subscriber numbers for Game Pass in years, and the company’s latest financial results showed declines in both gaming content and services revenue and Xbox hardware revenue. This latest change doesn’t answer the bigger questions around Game Pass, but it does make one thing clear: Xbox is willing to give up some of the day-one value to bring the monthly cost back down.