Xbox Game Pass price drop and Call of Duty delay could be a smart win-win move

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Over the past few years, Xbox has been on the receiving end of fan criticism for a few different reasons. On one hand, its community has been far from amused about the console giant’s biggest IPs, such as Halo, Forza, and Gears of War, making the jump to rival PlayStation. On the other hand, the frequent price hikes for Xbox Game Pass have further tested fans’ patience and have distanced the subscription service from its “the best deal in gaming” moniker.

However, a newly announced change has now addressed the latter issue by bringing down Game Pass Ultimate to $22.99 per month and PC Game Pass to $13.99 per month.

Additionally, it was also revealed that, per the latest change, new Call Of Duty will no longer arrive on these services at launch but only during the succeeding holiday season. While this change to COD titles may seem like a mere value depreciation, it may actually be the mutually beneficial way forward for Xbox Game Pass as well as for Activision’s highly popular FPS franchise.

In the past three years, Xbox Game Pass has received three significant price hikes, with the most recent hike in October 2025 drawing strong backlash and for good reason. That particular instance notably marked a sharp 50% increase in the monthly price of Game Pass Ultimate, taking the service’s highest tier to an eye-watering $29.99.

Even though Xbox threw in certain extras, such as Ubisoft+ Classics and Fortnite Crew, it evidently wasn’t enough to convince the community that the new price was justified. This consensus was so clear that, in an internal memo obtained by The Verge earlier in April, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma noted that the service had become “too expensive for players”—a sentiment she echoed in her X post announcing the latest price revision—and also highlighted the long-term plan for Game Pass to become “a more flexible system”.

The decision to let go of Call Of Duty day-one launches in favor of a more affordable subscription price not only moves Game Pass towards Sharma’s community-first vision but also allows COD to flourish better commercially. Let’s take a look at why these changes were likely the right call for both parties.

Game Pass Ultimate has become too expensive for too many players. Starting today, we’re dropping the price from $29.99 to $22.99/month.
Future Call of Duty titles will no longer join Game Pass Ultimate on day one. They will join this tier the following holiday after launch (about…

— Asha (@asha_shar) April 21, 2026

Xbox Game Pass is no longer what it used to be

When Game Pass first surfaced in 2017, on Xbox consoles, it came out with a relatively humble library of a hundred-odd games and an attractive price tag of $9.99. A couple of years later, the Ultimate tier was introduced at $14.99/month, combining access to the Game Pass library with online console multiplayer support—two services which would otherwise cost about $5 more if bought separately.

As more games and more features, including the service’s expansion to Windows PCs and cloud gaming support, kept being added without any bump in the price, Xbox Game Pass quickly earned the tag of “the best deal in gaming” among gamers. In fact, the subscription model was so popular at its peak that it even prompted PlayStation to transform PS Plus into a more Game Pass-like service, with the addition of Game Catalog.

But, after 2023, things changed drastically and, by 2025, Game Pass Ultimate’s monthly price basically doubled from $14.99 to $29.99 in just a little over two years. As a consequence, the subscription’s reputation of being bang-for-the-buck also withered away steadily. Even though Xbox parent Microsoft’s financial report for Q1 FY2026 (the period during which the last price hike occurred) mentioned a 1% growth in Xbox content and services revenue compared to the same time previous year, the fan outcry surrounding the rising cost of Game Pass was arguably still a major talking point.

Hence, Sharma’s decision to drop the price by $7 comes as long-overdue relief for those fans. With talks of a Game Pass-Netflix combo deal also heating up, the Xbox head honcho looks like she may have more cards up her sleeve to make the subscription service, which is a key driver of Microsoft’s gaming business, a value-for-money proposition in the eyes of players once again.

Call Of Duty was bearing the brunt of the day-one launch

According to Bloomberg, Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 reportedly lost an astonishing sum of more than $300 million in potential sales by adding the critically acclaimed 2024 game to Xbox Game Pass on the day of its release. Granted its arrival propelled Game Pass subscription growth to record launch day numbers, as was revealed by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, making the game available through a service that back then costed $19.99 appears to have severely hampered Black Ops 6 from adding to its unit sales revenue.

This also led to more players on Xbox playing the game via Game Pass instead of outright purchasing it, which ate into the game’s sales on Microsoft’s console. As a result, PS5 and PS4 held the lion’s share of COD: Black Ops 6’s sales, reaching up to a combined 82% in the initial weeks, as reported by industry analyst Mat Piscatella.

AAA games like Black Ops 6 involve the labor of several thousands of developers and hence cost hundreds of millions to make. In order to recoup the expenses and make a good profit, these titles often need to sell several million units. Putting together the $300 million in lost sales revenue and the standard AAA game price tag of $70, it can be inferred that day-one launch on Game Pass may have reduced COD: Black Ops 6’s unit sales by a margin of around 4.28 million units. Since, due to regional pricing, game prices in other major markets like the UK are often higher than in the US, there is a chance that the above estimate may even be a conservative figure.

Regardless, the loss of multiple million unit sales is a considerable sacrifice that new Call Of Duty titles had been making since 2024 in exchange for boosting Xbox Game Pass’s subscriber base.

Why ending Call Of Duty’s day-one launch agreement may have been for the best

The omission of Call Of Duty from the list of first-party releases that land on Game Pass at launch heralds a variety of positive knock-on effects. The very first area in which Xbox would benefit is the full-priced sales of future COD releases, which would majorly cut down the time the game takes to break even and start generating profits. Since Xbox has been the owner of Activision since 2023, technically the entire revenue from COD sales on Xbox consoles and Microsoft Store would belong to the Microsoft subsidiary.

Secondly, excusing a major first-party franchise from the obligatory day-one launch agreement also allows Xbox Game Pass to sustain the lowered prices more comfortably in the long term. To make things clear, when a big first-party release like Call Of Duty lands on Game Pass at launch, a large chunk of the service’s revenue is reserved for the developer of that game, as reported by industry insider Jez Corden.

By dropping Call Of Duty from its day-one lineup, that share of revenue is now set to be available for investing back into Game Pass, allowing the service to strike more deals with other developers and bring more games to its library.

It may be hard to recall, but there was a time when Xbox Game Pass didn’t get big releases on their first day of launch. While the appeal of getting to play the most anticipated titles on day one is undeniable, Xbox and some of its eminent first-party franchises may fare better if the former opts for a more judicious approach with day-one releases. There are a few tentpole game franchises, such as Call Of Duty and Halo, which more often than not produce games that become remarkable commercial successes.

These are the kind of games that many gamers will want play at launch even if they were not included as part of a subscription plan. For those titles, it may be more suitable to not be bound by the day-one agreement, so that Xbox can focus on maximizing their sales. On the flipside, it would make more sense for smaller first-party games and new IPs that are yet to scale to the levels of Call Of Duty’s popularity and that can benefit from having a bigger audience to come out day and date on Game Pass.

Such titles, which may have otherwise gone unnoticed, can foster a loyal fanbase by leveraging the exposure that landing on Xbox’s subscription service brings.

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