At one time XBOX fanbase were so desperate to play games like Halo and Gears of War that they were wrapping their dead XBOX 360 in a towel and putting it in an oven to resurrect it. That sounds so insane but it actually happened. Fast forward to now, Microsoft has raised hardware prices twice since May and now raising price of their game pass by 50%. Clearly they're no longer interested in increasing XBOX market share or even retaining it. They've pivoted their strategy to milk their current XBOX fans as much money as they can until the brand is completely dead.

Those billion AI GPUs won't pay for themselves you know.

We all knew enshittification was coming, but it spooled up faster than expected.

Canceled my subscription. Fuck you, Microsoft.

lol anyone who pays that is a fucking idiot

I used to be a huge advocate for Game Pass. I've played so many games I never would have without, and have saved so much from buying games and not liking them.

30 a month is insane. It now outpaces my buying rate and I can't justify it. The lower tiers just don't do it for me. They finally killed an Xbox Live customer since the 360.

As with almost all subscription services, the enshittification was inevitable.

Well I’m glad I’m already not paying them for this anymore, saves me having to cancel my subscription now.

Steam fall sale is happening now. Just picked up a ton of good games for less than 30 :)

This was always the plan and it will absolutely get worse. corporations only care about "line go up" they have never and will never give a fuck about the "customer".

Woo!

The morons who love renting get to pay more now!

I love watching this!

30$/month is hilarious. We all knew they were going to increase the price to justify how much microsoft is spending but at that point you might as well buy your games. I guess it would make sense if you're playing every day one release and are already subscribed to other things that are now included such as fortnite, ubisoft+...

but 99.9% of gamers are not that obsessed. I have a hard time believing there are many people willing to spend 360$ to play games that will disappear as soon as you stop playing. and I have a hard time believing most standard game pass subscribers will stay subscribed now that recently released games aren't included. That was the only reason I bothered subbing for a month every year or so

I barely even buy 5 games a year, and often not at full price. And usually the games I want aren't even on GamePass anyways.

$360/year is crazy. Only a good deal if you're buying more than 6 full price games a year and plan to 100% beat them and never play again before they disappear from the catalog.

Is this for the PC only version too? I can't tell through all the marketing speak.

We used to really enjoy game pass as a family. I think the best part is discovering games that we wouldn't have played otherwise. But at some point we stopped using it, so we cancelled. We've gotten 1 or 2 months free or cheap a couple of times now, but I ended up mainly playing one game... Although I suppose I did discover that I liked Avowed more than Expedition 33 😳. If I'd had to buy them, I would have only bought Expedition 33.

So I think we'll keep going like this... Once a year or so use a cheap trial to get a month and try a lot of games, and use steam sales the rest of the year, and every now and then buy a full price game we really want.

FYI - as of this posting sites like cdkeys (now loaded) have some og pricing but it's quickly rising. Buy em if you want to get through games like Outer Worlds 2 before dropping service.