After several days of rumors, the official confirmation has now arrived: Microsoft really is lowering the price of Game Pass, and the cut affects both of its most popular subscription tiers. On the surface, that sounds like a surprising change after a long period defined more by price hikes and uncertainty than generosity, but the decision comes with a very clear trade-off: new Call of Duty games will no longer launch day one on the service.

Microsoft announced the move through the official Xbox website, and the company did not really try to hide that this is a strategic shift. In its message, the platform holder argued that players use the service in very different ways and come with very different preferences, so there is no single model that works perfectly for everyone. At the same time, it said this new decision responds to many of the comments it has received from users so far. In other words, Microsoft wants to present this as a sign that it is finally listening – while also quietly removing one of the biggest incentives the service had.

The price cut affects both Game Pass Ultimate and Game Pass PC. Ultimate drops from 26.99 euros to 20.99 euros, while the PC plan falls from 14.99 euros to 12.99 euros. On paper, that is a meaningful reduction, especially given that before the original increase in October 2025 those same subscriptions cost 17.99 euros and 11.99 euros respectively. So yes, Microsoft is walking part of the move back – but not all the way. The service is still more expensive than it used to be, only now it is a little less brazen about it.

The real twist is what happens to Call of Duty. From now on, new entries in the series will no longer be available through the subscription on day one. Instead, those titles will only arrive on the service more than a year after release. Microsoft clearly knows some players will be unhappy about that, but it seems to have decided that regaining some goodwill through lower pricing is worth more than continuing to burn money by dropping one of gaming’s biggest sellers straight into the catalog at launch.

New Call of Duty Games Are Out of the Day-One Deal, but the Current Ones Are Staying

Microsoft has also moved quickly to soften the backlash. The company confirmed that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will not be removed from the service, even though the new prices take effect immediately. On top of that, Call of Duty‘s official social media channels published a statement of their own, insisting that Game Pass remains an excellent place for players to discover games, including Call of Duty. According to that message, the overall goal has not changed: deliver the best possible game across all platforms while continuing to support Game Pass through its existing catalog and with new Call of Duty releases arriving around the holiday season of the year after launch.

Asha Sharma, the new head of Xbox, also weighed in and repeated her earlier line that Game Pass will keep evolving in order to better reflect what matters to players. She also made it clear that although the newest Call of Duty games are stepping off the day-one ship, current entries in the series will remain available for Ultimate subscribers.

The business logic underneath all this is not especially hard to read. Call of Duty originally added huge value to Game Pass, but over time it also turned into a toxic asset for the service. While it boosted prestige, it also likely cost Microsoft hundreds of millions of euros in direct sales because too many players could simply wait and access the franchise through a subscription instead. That helps explain why the company previously pushed through such an aggressive price increase, one that badly damaged the service’s public perception. What Microsoft is doing now is trying to simplify the model: cut loose the element that distorted the economics the most, while giving something back to more price-sensitive users.

The timing is not accidental either. Microsoft is already looking ahead to the launch of Project Helix, the codename for the next Xbox console, and that machine is expected to arrive in an even more difficult market position than the Xbox Series X|S. It will not just have to live with the consequences of several weak strategic decisions from recent years, but also convince players to buy into a new kind of powerful, more open console ecosystem. In that context, a cheaper Game Pass is politically and commercially useful. But it also makes one thing unmistakably clear: Microsoft has finally accepted that day-one Call of Duty on the service was not a gift – it was an expensive luxury.

Source: 3DJuegos