In return, however, the Redmond company has brought back a deal that has been excellent for years.

With the launch of the Xbox Game Pass, more savvy users could take advantage of a loophole that Microsoft had left for them until now, and through it, they could get the more expensive tier of subscription, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, at a low price. Microsoft previously promised that Xbox Live Gold subscriptions could be converted to the more expensive Game Pass at a 1:1 ratio. So up to three years of Xbox Live Gold could be converted to an XGPU subscription with a single Game Pass Ultimate code. This system worked for six years.

But now, Microsoft has changed the 1:1 ratio to 3:2, according to their website. So the company has cut back a bit on the bargain. However, you can buy a three-year Xbox Live Gold subscription for about $150 and still get two years of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate instead of three, which would be about half the price of buying the subscription without the gimmick. And the timing doesn’t seem coincidental at all.

In two months, Xbox Game Studios’ big hope for this year, Starfield from Todd Howard (Bethesda Game Studios), will be released, obviously, for Xbox Series and PC only, in addition to Game Pass. This is how Microsoft wants to drive subscribers to Xbox Game Pass because its subscriber base will grow over time, so the latest Xbox titles will be available as soon as they are released (even running from the cloud). There has been a recent price increase, so new subscribers will have to pay more for Xbox Game Pass (we wrote about this recently, and Xbox Series X costs similarly more).

In return, however, the $1 Game Pass offer for new subscribers is back, but this time, only on PC and Ultimate, not console, which is understandable because Xbox CEO Phil Spencer says PC is where the most considerable growth in the subscriber base is.

Source: WCCFTech