Microsoft announces surprise Xbox Game Pass price cuts, ends day one Call of Duty inclusion — Ultimate down to $22.99 while PC Game Pass drops to $13.99

After several years of subsequent price rises and management restructuring that led many gamers to believe the Xbox brand was on its way out, Microsoft has pulled off a surprise move. The company announced today in a press release that it would bring the price of Game Pass Ultimate back down from $29.99 to $22.99, while the PC Game Pass goes from $16.49 to $13.99 a month.

It's not all good news, though, as those who subscribed to Game Pass for the sole purpose of playing Call of Duty (CoD) will now have to wait around a year for new titles to appear on the platform. The change does not affect existing CoD releases, and all other day-one game releases will continue.

The now-nullified decision to include CoD in a monthly subscription was widely deemed as particularly gutsy. The game sells tens of millions of copies a year. At $70 a pop for the standalone title, it's possible the company was leaving hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, on the table.

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Even still, in the broader scheme of things, this development is quite the volte-face for Microsoft, which repeatedly hiked the price of both the consoles and subscriptions over the past couple of years. Those decisions led to wide speculation that the company could be preparing for the end of the Xbox brand, in light of a minority market share versus the PlayStation.

As a quick recap, Microsoft raised the price of the Xbox twice in the 2025 calendar year alone, with the first raise in May and the second in September. The Game Pass subscription had seen a dollar hike in 2024 along with added limitations, and salt was further rubbed on the wound in 2025 with a 50% raise with nary any benefits — a move that led to so many cancellations that the Microsoft website was reportedly having issues processing them.

This Game Pass price drop is the first big commercial move since Asha Sharma took over the division. The choice of executive was a move out of left field, as she was previously managing the Core AI business. Nevertheless, Sharma is reportedly spearheading an effort to revitalize the brand, and bringing down subscription prices to more reasonable prices is a decision that will definitely be appreciated by gamers.

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