A Resetera user floated a claim this week that Microsoft is about to rebuild Xbox Game Pass from the ground up, and the part everyone keeps repeating is that the service gets cheaper. That’s true. It’s also not the whole sentence.
The catch is what you give up to get there.
Two tiers, one of them with ads
According to the rumor, Microsoft splits Game Pass into two subscriptions: one with advertising, one without. The ad-supported tier would run $12.99 a month. The ad-free version would cost $19.99, roughly $3 cheaper than what Americans pay right now.
Yes, ads. In a paid subscription. We’ve all watched this movie before on the streaming side, and you know how the second act goes.
The rest of the price sheet
A one-year ad-free Game Pass subscription would land at $239.99. The Family Plan would tack on an extra $5.99 a month.
There’s also a middle option in the rumor: access to the Game Pass library plus online multiplayer for $14.99 a month.
Cloud Streaming gets cut out of Game Pass entirely under this plan. Want it back? That’s an add-on, $5.99.
Why the price drops, and what it costs you
Here’s the trade the rumor describes. Microsoft would knock $3 off the price because Day One releases would no longer land on the service.
Day One was the pitch. It was the reason people forgave the price hikes. Pulling it out and calling the result a discount is a particular kind of math.
The change would reportedly take effect from February, or by April 2027 at the latest.
Take all of it with a large grain of salt
This one has been bouncing around the internet for the last several hours, picking up speed the way unsourced pricing leaks always do. Nothing here is official.
Microsoft hasn’t announced anything, and a forum post is a forum post no matter how detailed the spreadsheet attached to it looks.
What makes it stick, though, is that none of it sounds implausible. An ad tier, a stripped-down core plan, cloud gaming sold separately, Day One quietly walked back. Every one of those moves has a precedent somewhere in the subscription business.
That’s the uncomfortable thing about a rumor this tidy. You don’t believe it, exactly. You just can’t think of a reason it couldn’t be true.
