Just found out about this price hike from M$ With three lads I can no longer justify the eye watering, amusingly shafting £69 a month for the gaming needs . . . I was paying £11 a month for Ultimate on Wednesday . . Thoughts .
Ah the classic subscription model of big tech companies. Offer low price, sign up millions of people, increase price by x%, hope that <x% of people cancel, profit! Obviously simplified example but less people paying more is more profitable anyway as you need less infrastructure to support the smaller userbase. In otherwords, people cancelling is more of a feature than a bug of price hikes
Yup they know that most will pay, for my daughter I removed subs from me to her, gave her pocket money, told her if she wants things it has to come from that, or don't have it, it's a luxury after all not a necessity, soon tempers what she wants and the levels, and of course once she was 16 I stopped the pocket money and said if you want things get a job! Yup I’m a git like that, doesn’t matter whether I can afford it or not. It was quite amusing when your 14yr comes up to you with a presentation for a pocket money rise based on cost of living, inflation and how well she has done this year.
Years ago i managed to get 1year of game pass for £1 through a training program and we found out they stacked so got years worth, the price increaes are wild, i bet no extra goes to the devs who are on the service, there was an artical about how they increased the console price is the states blaming tariffs.. My phone contract is just as bad in 2 years its risen 3 times... The only sub i now have is Wow, and i alternate between this and ff14..
Price rises I can stomach. I think Game Pass Ultimate is a couple of quid a month more than when I first started subscribing. What grates me about this is the huge 50% increase and MS selling it to us like a good thing because we now get Fortnite Crew and Ubisoft Classics thrown in. Two things I've never wanted or needed. Thankfully I'm paid up until August next year so have got plenty of time to decide what to do.
My several years of stacked ultimate codes expired 2 weeks ago! Bought 1 as a short term fix and this happens. Thinking of just buying a 12 month essentials pass from cdkeys.
I have zero interest in the Ubisoft **** they went off the boil decades ago and zero interest in ****ing Fortnite crew either. Nor cloud gaming. We’ve had the PC Game Pass for several spells on and off but after this stunt it will remain off. If they had brought out the family plan version like they trialled for a while I’d probably actually have that for three licenses but no, instead of giving people something useful they’re forcing people to have literal rubbish and a huge hike. Microsoft just own most of the devs on it now
I downgraded to PC only after I sold my mostly unused Xbox the other month, and after this price hike, I've just outright cancelled it. I could justify the cost for the few games a year I played on the service but now it's cheaper to buy the games I'd have played on it, even if I don't like them. I can't even justify it with "at least they don't shutter studios" because that seems to be all they do. Buy and shut. Insane leadership choices I don't intend to fund through subscriptions.
Apart from the fact there are so many giveaways these days that I can't keep up - Epic, Amazon/Twitch etc. - there are a couple of workarounds you can do. Three years ago, I bought three years' worth of Live Gold for the X360 (~£90-odd) then paid £1 to convert all three years to Ultimate. That ran out last month, so the trick this time was to get three years of Game Pass Core/Essential (lowest tier) and pay £15 for an extra month to convert to Ultimate, but at a 2:1 rate, so effectively giving 18 months plus the month of Ultimate you paid for in addition. Worked out as ~£145 for 19 months = £7.63/mth. You can do similar with other subs like EA and convert them if you have them lying around, but the ratio isn't as good.
I haven't paid for GPU in a long while as I use MS Rewards points, but they've also made that more difficult now. They've removed the 3 month GPU reward, if you want it now you have to get an MS Gift Card and use that to buy GPU I've still got a few months before mine runs out, so I'll see if I'm able to get any more with points by then. If not, I guess, I get the lowest Xbox one I can. Sad times.
Ah, good point! I forgot about using points as well. It is a shame - they're just going to drive people to buy cheap keys from Kinguin, cdkeys etc.. And people will buy less. It's not as if they're captive to MS and MS will lose out in the long run. I think the Xbox definitely peaked at the 360 - we used to be on it online ALL the time, playing Gears, Halo, Rainbow 6, anything co-op really. Can't remember ever playing co-op on my Series X. Maybe once or twice including local LANish at a mate's house. I miss those 360 days, life actually seemed better then as well.
Just got the price-hike notification through, and immediately dropped from Ultimate to Premium at less than half the price. Biggest loss will be Blue Prince which my youngest loves, but we've not played it in a while and I can always just buy that.
This is one of those citation needed but on the "wan show" they mentioned that xbox consoles had been removed from sale in several conpanies mainly us based. I only own xbox couldnt tell you which one i got it for free a COD limited edition thing. Ive powered it up once its now holding a door open Its almost like buying all the companies is expensive so either close studios fire people or charge everyone more. How long before windows is like the office where its free but with adverts and micro transactions..
Am I right in saying that the essentials pass is fine, as long as you don't need access to a huge number of games or EA play? Seems like with the money saved you could buy games from CD keys and have plenty of change left over!
Dropped it a few months ago. Barely used it. It became just another subscription I kept going on the off-chance that it might be useful at some point. In reality, the number of times I’ve opened the Xbox application this year - including opening it accidentally - can be counted on one hand. In the current console generation, Microsoft has had its arse handed to it on a silver platter. With trimmings. But. Hey ho. Gotta figure out some way to make some money back on that Bethesda acquisition. $7.5bn was rather a lot of money to pay in order to prevent Starfield from being a Playstation exclusive.
Oh, you're right - it's buried in the middle of the features list at the top of the thread, whereas it's at the bottom of Premium and Ultimate. My mistake!
Never had an Xbox pass nor a ps thingamabob. Got so many freebies to get through and alot of games I just play to absolute death so it's actually just cheaper for me to buy games as and when.
