Xbox quietly increases cost of Game Pass for huge number of users

A few eagle-eyed folks have just spotted that the price of Xbox Game Pass is about to increase drastically, based on info gleaned from the Microsoft Rewards program.

As noted by user Conflict_NZ over on the r/Xbox subreddit, changes to how you redeem Xbox Game Pass Ultimate rewards through the Xbox Rewards program indicates that the price of a subscription is likely about to increase.

“As some people who use rewards might know, Auto-Redeem for Gamepass Ultimate has been unavailable for a while. In the last few hours it has just returned with a significantly higher cost,” user Conflict_NZ writes in their post.

“A month of Xbox Gamepass Ultimate is now 17,000 as opposed to 12,000 and PC Gamepass is now 10,500 instead of 7,500. Luckily the one off redemptions are still available at their old values but might not be for long so if you have been sitting on some points now might be the time to redeem them.”

So, let’s break this down for you. For those unaware of how the Microsoft Reward program works, essentially you earn points through the app by buying new games or completing specific challenges. Said points can then be spent on rewards such as Xbox Game Pass subscriptions.

If the cost of a month of Xbox Gamepass Ultimate is set to increase by 5,000 through the Microsoft Reward program, that indicates that the actual monetary cost of a subscription is set to increase in return by roughly one-third.

For reference, one month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate currently costs £14.99 in the United Kingdom. That would imply that its cost could increase to upwards of £20 per month.

Of course, there is always a chance that Microsoft will stop at simply increasing the cost of the rewards you can redeem through the Xbox Rewards program, but it’s best to prepare for the worst.