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Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with cloud gaming gets a price cut and just one trade-off

Microsoft is making big changes to Xbox under new leadership, including today announcing a major price cut for Game Pass Ultimate – the one with cloud gaming.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is dropping in price from $29.99/month to $22.99/month. PC Game Pass is also dropping to $13.99/month, while the Essential and Premium console plans are sticking at $9.99 and $14.99, respectively.

These new prices are effective immediately through Xbox.com.

The “catch,” if you want to call it that, is that Microsoft will no longer be offering Call of Duty games through Game Pass on day one. Instead, they’ll wait about a year to join the subscription, while existing CoD games remain available for play.

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Microsoft explains:

Starting today, Game Pass Ultimate drops from $29.99 to $22.99 a month. PC Game Pass will also drop from $16.49 to $13.99 a month. Prices may vary by region.

Beginning this year, future Call of Duty titles won’t join Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch. New Call of Duty games will be added to Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass during the following holiday season (about a year later), while existing Call of Duty titles already in the library will continue to be available.

At a time where everything seems to be getting more expensive, this is certainly nice to see.

In a tweet, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma acknowledged that Ultimate had “become too expensive for too many players.”

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Updated to remove mention that cloud streaming was exclusive to Ultimate, which is no longer the case.

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Avatar for Ben Schoon Ben Schoon

Ben is a Senior Editor for 9to5Google.

Find him on Twitter @NexusBen. Send tips to schoon@9to5g.com or encrypted to benschoon@protonmail.com.