You don't need us to tell you that Xbox's recent changes to Game Pass have been received with some disgruntlement over the past couple of days, with the criticism being mostly applied to the price increase for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
One fan has even take it upon themselves to come up with a concept for an Xbox Game Pass "Select" plan, which would live alongside the current versions but give you the ability to pick the benefits you wanted.
You'd start off with all the "Essential" benefits, and then add stuff like day one releases and EA Play titles for an extra fee. Here's how they describe it, along with a look at the concept itself:
"I made Game Pass modular. The idea is that you start with the essential plan and then add only the perks you actually want. This approach would fix some issues with the current plans — for example, when someone only wants Day One access but doesn’t need the extra perks that come bundled with Ultimate. With GP Select, it would cost $16.99 instead of $29.99. Obviously some of the prices could be adjusted, and the new tiers (Premium, Ultimate) would still be available."
We think this is a really cool idea, and we love the effort that's gone into making it! That said, we can also understand some of the commenters who are pointing out that it's great from a consumer-friendly perspective, but probably doesn't serve the needs of the business enough.
As many have suggested, it feels like Microsoft felt compelled to raise the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and threw in a bunch of extras to sweeten the deal - and therefore a "Select" plan probably isn't viable over at Microsoft HQ.
But who knows? Maybe they'll listen to this feedback and come up with some kind of modular plan to appease those who don't want to pay a premium for day one games in the future? We'll have to wait and see.