Xbox Game Pass Lost 'Millions' Of Subscribers Following October 2025 Price Increase

No surprise really. With the cancellation page crashing after the price increase it was pretty obvious. Apart from the odd person on here who claimed they never lost any subs.

Hence the 180, with Asha taking the helm. If anything smacked Satya, it was the loss of millions of subs. Personally, I think Asha is doing a solid job since taking over from Spencer - and props to them for admitting they need a reset.

The way I looked at the increase, they were basically trying to force me into buying a fortnite add on if I wanted CoD and other tier 1 benefits.

I dont play games online, and fortnite is no exception, so I found it more beneficial to just cancel and buy things adhoc.

Ive still not resubbed and probably wont for a while as Ive come to learn I just didnt use it all that much.

I cancelled my gamepass ultimate after subscribing basically since it came out. Also, Call of Duty is the biggest draw for me so I am just going to buy that and keep the 24.99 every 3 months subscription.

Obvious news round up of the day!

Microsoft should be included in the Guinness World Records book as the only company required to share all its strategies and financial accounts with the world. It's also very suspicious that some supposedly multiplatform gamers are always interested in very specific data from Xbox and not from Sony and always to picture a constant failure scenario, even turning positive news (not this one) into extraordinary drama and faking disappointment, or only react negatively when Xbox cancels games or shut studios down or raise prices as if it was the only one to do so, but don't react when Sony does worse nor when Xbox does positive things.

In my opinion, this makes total sense. I didn't cancel Ultimate, but as I said here when the price was raised, I was already subscribed for a long time. It's wise to exclude Call of Duty because we all know is the "culprit". It was already an exception (not included during the first year) in Premium before it was excluded from Ultimate, so I knew something like this would happen. EA Play has been there from the start and maybe it's cheap and great value for Microsoft because EA Sports is always topping the charts, but adding Ubisoft+ and Fornite Crew was not needed.

In other news. Blood is red?

Bound to lose some it happens. I don't think it's a massive deal long term.

@Fiendish-Beaver I don't think it was Spencer. The guy looked beat towards the last few months of his tenure. I'd wager that most of that was Satya, and I'd argue that community morale was at an all time low, and so a change in leadership was struck up to cover a 180 turnaround.

I'm gunna guess that Satya and the high-ups wont mess around with the division too much again if their influence has caused these issues, but it's a guess for anyone as to how this turns out. I personally think charging more for Ultimate and forcing Fortnite and Ubi on us was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Fortnite, of all games. A F2P game that requires heaps of time to max out, is hardly the target demographic for GP. Still, removing CoD is a wise move if it lessens the cost for the rest of the service. I also wouldn't mind a choice in having to have EA Access there too.

Id rather they remove the Fortnite crap and stuff and lower it even more I don't play those games

It was the CEOs fault because he needed more money to fund their AI *****

You didn't have to be an insider and know the actual numbers to know this would have happened. I am just shocked they never expected it. Or perhaps some did and they voiced that opinion and they went ahead with it anyway. The biggest challenge now will be trying to convince those who left to come back since they have dropped the price.

Who'd have thought that a significant price rise would lose subscribers, trying to justify it with these added extras that will be worthless to the majority of subscribers. Those playing Fortnite aren't likely to be the same as those paying for a subscription to play lots of games, then you have the Ubisoft stuff which are just games that are always on big sales. There was an article here recently showing the many Gamepass perks, none of which I even remotely have a use for.

All I want from Gamepass is access to the games and for a reasonable price

It was clear a 50% price increase would result in less subs and I’m sure they expected it.

I can only think the reason it happened was due to the 30% profit margin target that was supposedly insisted on around that time.

If they did not expect that would happen. The people making decisions, should not be making decisions.

XBOX will never hit the number of GPU subs that it had in the past due to stacking and the fact it's day one releases for the main part are poor. And yes I know the vocal minority love the good old trip down memory lane indie titles but they just have zero longevity and don't sell the service. Personally I think XBOX should stop all the big expensive AAA releases on GP and just have the service for the indie shelf fillers and charge a few quid a month.

Cancelled my Game Pass subscription immediately the price rise was announced and haven’t regretted it.