Microsoft has cut the prices of its two most-used gaming subscriptions, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, with the changes taking effect today. The trade-off is significant: new Call of Duty games will no longer be included in either plan at launch, and will only land on Game Pass roughly a year after release.
In a post on Xbox Wire, Microsoft confirmed that Game Pass Ultimate now costs $22.99 per month, down from $29.99. PC Game Pass drops from $16.49 to $13.99. That is a 23% cut on Ultimate and roughly 15% off PC Game Pass. The cheaper Essential ($9.99) and Premium ($14.99) tiers stay the same, though those plans never included day-one releases.
For Kenyan subscribers, who buy Ultimate through global resellers on platforms like Jiji and Instok (Microsoft does not sell Game Pass directly in Kenya through M-PESA), the new Ultimate pricing works out to about KES 2,970 per month, with PC Game Pass around KES 1,810 at current exchange rates. That figure is exposed to currency risk: Wall Street just flagged the Kenya Shilling as one of Africa’s most vulnerable currencies, which means dollar-priced subscriptions can get more painful locally without anyone in Redmond touching a dial.
Why Microsoft is reversing course
This is a near-total reversal of the path Microsoft was on six months ago. In October 2025, the company hiked Ultimate by $10 to $29.99 a month, a move that felt like a 50% increase overnight and drew heavy backlash. Earlier this month, newly-appointed Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma, who replaced Phil Spencer in February, told staff in an internal memo that Game Pass had become “too expensive for too many players.” She repeated that publicly on X today.
The context is not flattering for Microsoft. CFO Amy Hood told investors that Xbox content and services revenue came in below internal projections, and announced an impairment charge on the gaming business. That division was expanded in 2023 with the $75.4 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition.
Why Call of Duty got cut
The Call of Duty decision is the most revealing part of today’s announcement. Bloomberg previously reported that putting Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on Game Pass at launch cost Microsoft more than $300 million in lost game sales, because players who would have bought the $69.99 title outright simply played it on Game Pass instead. Black Ops 7 went on to become only the fifth best-selling game of the year in the US, the lowest a Call of Duty has placed in nearly 20 years.
Going forward, new Call of Duty games will arrive on Game Pass about a year after launch, timed to the following holiday season. Existing titles already in the library, including Black Ops 6 and Warzone, stay available. Activision called Game Pass “an awesome place for players to discover games, including Call of Duty,” which is the most neutral spin possible on what is effectively a rollback of Microsoft’s big 2023 pitch that Activision’s crown jewel would be on Game Pass day one, forever.
The bigger question
Microsoft has not publicly updated Game Pass subscriber numbers since 2024, when the service had 34 million users. Industry watchers argue that growth has slowed well below what Microsoft pitched back in 2018. Sharma, a former Meta executive, is walking into a job that looks a lot like what John Ternus is stepping into at Apple, per our earlier coverage of Tim Cook’s exit: cleaning up after a predecessor’s strategic bets. Today’s changes are unlikely to be her last.
For Xbox players in Kenya, the short-term message is simpler. You will pay less for Game Pass starting today. But if you want new Call of Duty at launch, you now need to buy it the old-fashioned way.
