Game News
Xbox cuts Game Pass Ultimate to $22.99, but Call of Duty no longer arrives on day one
Microsoft cut the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass on 21 April, the first big consumer move under Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma. In the US, Ultimate fell from $29.99 to $22.99 a month and PC Game Pass from $16.49 to $13.99, Geeks + Gamers reported, with the change taking effect immediately.
The trade-off: future Call of Duty games will no longer join Ultimate or PC Game Pass on launch day. They will arrive the following holiday season, about a year after release, while Call of Duty games already in the library stay. Pure Xbox listed the new prices by region: in the UK Ultimate goes from £22.99 to £16.99, in Europe from €26.99 to €20.99, in Canada from $33.99 to $25.99 and in Australia from $35.95 to $25.95. Essential and Premium prices are unchanged, and existing subscribers pay the new price from their next renewal.
“Game Pass Ultimate has become too expensive for too many players.” — Asha Sharma, via Geeks + Gamers
How each outlet framed it
- Geeks + Gamers — the US cut and the Call of Duty delay, led by Sharma's post on X.
- Pure Xbox — a region-by-region table, plus better conversion rates when upgrading from Essential or Premium to Ultimate.
- tbreak — the backstory: an internal Sharma memo, obtained by The Verge, admitting Game Pass had become too expensive after Ultimate rose 50% to $29.99 in 2025.
What we don't know yet: In the memo, as reported by tbreak, Sharma described a future “more flexible system which will take time to test and learn around”. Microsoft has not said what that system will look like.