From the beginnings of a service acclaimed as the “Netflix of the gaming industry”, Xbox Game Pass’s novelty has come to an end. Microsoft has ultimately made the decision to increase the price of their service, leading to fans questioning the integrity and future of Xbox moving forward.
Subscription services have come a long way since the days of Redbox and Blockbuster. These services took traction in the gaming industry with Microsoft’s announcement of their Xbox console alongside its new service called Xbox Live during E3 2002. Since then, many services have come and gone in the gaming console scene, with one in particular having high praise: Xbox Game Pass.
From the initial launch, Xbox Game Pass gained mass traction for the sheer number of games it had to offer in comparison to Sony’s own cloud service at the time, Playstation Now. Playstation Now is now part of Playstation Plus, still offering its small library of cloud games to play. Game Pass boasted its library of more than 100 Xbox One and 360 games for only $9.99 a month.
But that was back in 2017. Times have changed, so prices have adjusted for modern day inflation. But surely Xbox is still ahead in the gaming industry, right? Well, as of July 19, 2024, Xbox is facing backlash not only from its community of supporters, but the US Federal Trade Commission itself. What went wrong?
On October 13, 2023, Microsoft announced their buyout of the studio Activision Blizzard, the company behind many popular games such as Call of Duty and Candy Crush. They bought it out for “$68.7 billion, making this the biggest buyout in videogames industry history,” says rockpapershotgun.com. Many anticipated this leading to a price jump in their subscription services, but Microsoft itself retorted, “the acquisition would benefit consumers by making [Call of Duty] available on Microsoft’s Game Pass on the day it is released on console (with no price increase for the service based on the acquisition), on Nintendo, and on other services that allow cloud streaming,” (rockpapershotgun.com).
It’s clear Microsoft did not stay true to their word, with the announcement of the subscription service price bump, hence the US Federal Trade Commission harsh remarks towards this decision.
