Xbox has announced another shakeup to the way Xbox Game Pass tiers work, and you’re now going to be forking over a lot more cash if you want an Ultimate subscription.
As detailed in an Xbox Wire news post, there will now be three core tiers of Game Pass: Essential, Premium, and Ultimate (and yes, that wording will probably seem rather familiar if you’re a PlayStation Plus devotee).
The PC Game Pass tier is disappearing; all three tiers will now go across PC and console. The Essential tier is, as you’d imagine, the cheapest on offer, and it grants access to “50+ games”, unlimited cloud gaming, and console multiplayer for $10 per month.
The second tier is Premium, which will cost you $14.99 per month and grant you access to Xbox-published games “within a year of launch”, although that appears to exclude games in the Call of Duty series.
You’ll also get the same benefits as the Essential tier, although you’ll enjoy “shorter wait times” for cloud gaming. Naturally, the benefits for the Premium and Essential tiers are also rolled into Ultimate, which is the only tier whose name hasn’t changed.
What has changed is the pricing; you’ll now be coughing up an eye-watering $30 per month for Game Pass Ultimate, and in return, you’ll get “75+ day one games a year, including all Xbox-published games day one”. As a reminder, Ultimate subscribers already get this benefit for $20 a month.
Other Ultimate benefits include access to the Ubisoft+ Classics range and a Fortnite Crew subscription, as well as “best quality” cloud gaming with “shortest wait times”.
These changes, which come into effect immediately, are the second major Game Pass overhaul in under two years, although this one’s arguably more drastic than the one put into effect back in July last year.
The changes also come shortly after Xbox declared that this year marks its “largest investment” in the Game Pass service, although that hasn’t stopped former Xbox staffers and other industry luminaries from questioning the service’s worth to creators.
