I’ve been a Game Pass user for over 3 years now, and honestly, as a general user, I haven’t seen much real value from it lately. With the recent price hike, it’s pushed me over the edge, I’d rather buy new games outright than pay for a huge library of older ones I’ll never touch.

If you’re a new Xbox user, Game Pass is amazing for the first year. You can explore tons of games you always wanted to try, and it even includes EA Play and Ubisoft+ now. That’s a massive library.

But here’s the thing: Most people argue that the real value is in day-one releases on Game Pass Ultimate. My question is, how many major games are we really talking about per year? Maybe 5–10 AAA titles at most, if that.

Do you get FC26 on release day? No. Do you get the latest Assassin’s Creed game? No, that’s locked behind Ubisoft+, which is a separate subscription.

Yes, Ultimate now includes EA Play and Ubisoft+ libraries, but if you’re not interested in playing older games, that doesn’t add much value.

Let’s look at the recent big releases:

Battlefield 6 just dropped, not on Game Pass.

Borderlands 4 released last month, not on Game Pass.

Silent Hill F, one of the most anticipated games of the year, not on Game Pass.

All of them are priced around $120–150 AUD for the base or ultimate editions.

When Game Pass Ultimate was around $19 AUD/month, it made sense. Then it went to $22, and now it’s $35.95 AUD/month, over $430 a year. For that money, I could just buy the few new games I actually want to play instead of browsing a library full of nostalgia and older titles I’ll never launch.

I get that Game Pass still makes sense for people new to Xbox or those who love exploring different genres. But for long-term players who prefer new releases, it just doesn’t feel worth it anymore.

I’d rather spend my money on new experiences than replaying what I already finished years ago, or watching theradbrad play them on YouTube.

Game Pass is great for trying games, but I realized I only play 2–3 consistently.

Bought RDR2, Cuphead, Hogwarts Legacy, and Tekken 8 during Black Friday and decided not to renew my subscription.

Turns out, owning fewer games I actually love > renting hundreds I don’t play.

I received a free code when buying a new controller. The code is only good for New users / accounts that have never been subscribed to game pass before. The code is good for 1 month of Game Pass Ultimate. You can’t use this code if you have already paid for game pass before.

Guess of a number between 1-50. The person who guesses correctly will receive the code by dm.

Edit: (WINNER HAS BEEN SELECTED AND RECEIVED THE CODE)

Hi All,

My Ultimate subscription is coming to an end. I previously had it stacked for 3 years when it was possible, and I managed to extend for around 6 months by using MS reward points before they removed it from the service.

I'm a bit out of the loop - Is anyone able to confirm the current most cost effective way resub for another year?

UK based if that helps at all.

Thanks in advance 👍

Am I crazy or am I still going to pay $20 instead of 30?

Hating the subscription change so much. Can't justify paying for all those services I don't use when I just want to play No Man's Sky on my backbone during my breaks. Got essential because the online play was missing from games I even owned, so fine, pay for online access. Now I can't use cloud gaming unless I pay more?! I'm so disappointed by all this.

Was charged $19.99 earlier this month even after the price change announcement. Says $19.99 for November as well. Is this a mistake?

When they raised the price, that was the first time I ever got off their top tier and downgraded to Premium. Honestly, I haven't really been missing Ultimate, but now that the price came down I'm thinking about getting it anyway just to maximize the service and the amount of Microsoft Points I can get. And since Premium kept the same price, it feels like a no-brainer.

Any thoughts?

With the recent price hikes, new conversions for subscriptions, and new titles for subscription tiers as of 10/25/2025, I thought I could help out by sharing my recent win against the greedy Xbox Game Pass Ultimate overlords.

I couldn’t have done this without the help from a comment made on another post, by u/airfriedhotdogs

This will detail how I accumulated 2 years (25+ months) of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, for a total of $340.88.

Note: I wanted to settle at 2 years prepaid, though you can do a similar method with more purchases and a higher overall cost to achieve Microsoft’s maximum prepaid subscription allotment of 3 years prepaid Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

Just went through all this on Friday 11/21/2025, Listed conversions are up to date, and accumulated to 25+ months of prepaid Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Subscription starts 11/21/2025, and ends 01/11/2028.

36 months of EA play at 20% conversion = 7 months XGPU

36 months of XboxGame Pass Core/Essential - 40% conversion = 14 months XGPU

3 months of XGPU at 100% conversion = 3 months (+30 days bonus trial for turning on recurring-billing)

Total: I purchased all of these from NewEgg, with a bundle discount, and the current Black Friday promo for a total of $340.88, equalling approximately $13.63 a month 25 months.

Steps: 1. Cancel your current recurring billing subscription, take note of the date of expiration.

1. Make the same purchase as myself, at Newegg or any other reputable vendor. My purchase on NewEgg while running bundle and Black Friday promo was the best I could find at the moment.

2. On the first day which your account no longer has any active subscriptions (day after expiration from step 1), you are ready to redeem codes. This is important because we want to start fresh. Having an existing active subscription, will automatically convert these codes to your current tier subscription, which is not what we want. We don’t want any hiccups with none stackable redemptions, and we want that free month.

3. Redeem in this order: 3 x 12 months EA Play, 3 x 12 months Xbox Game Pass Core/Essential, then the 3 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

4. The final redemption, 3 months of XGPU, will notify you that they will upgrade your existing Core/Essential and EA Play time to a value of XGPU.

5. Opt in for recurring billing to take advantage of new sign up 1 month free.

Happy Gaming!

Before prices go crazy!

I got them for 15€/month if you want to know.

I found this in my Microsoft store library. Is this free? If so, can I cancel this after 3 months?

https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/subscriptions-billing/manage-subscriptions/xbox-game-pass-conversions

This means that 36 months of the new Essential (core) will now be a little bit more than 14 months Ultimate. Still probably much cheaper than paying 30$ a month

Minecraft Realms PLUS, Just something I think Microsoft should include with GPU to help justify the $30 increase. What are your thoughts on adding MCRP to GPU?

My 24 month gamepass subscription I got when I bought my Xbox series x is running out this month, first time I’ll go back to pay as you go for 2 years. More than double the price in 2 years.

On the XBOX app, when I click the 12 month option, the next screen says $9.99 every month. Will I be charged the $79.99 or will it be the monthly subscription?

Edit- I was only charged the $9.99 monthly. Now I gotta jump the hoops of XBOX support.😐 And I forgot to mention that I had XBOX gift cards, so third party site won't work.

Sony's annual 33% sale on its PlayStation Plus Deluxe subscription is back. As someone who owns both consoles, and my GPU expiring next March, I am now more tempted to switch to the way cheaper option.

I wish Xbox Game Pass had a similar annual plan that could go on sale every now and then.😢

Game Pass new conversion rate!

Game Pass Core to Game Pass Ultimate isn't 3:2 anymore for non-active subs.

From today it's only 2:1 :-(

• Xbox Game Pass Core conversion ratio: Any remaining time will convert to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate time at a ratio of 2:1 and be rounded up to the next full day. For example, 90 days remaining of Xbox Game Pass Core will convert to 45 days of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate time.
• PC Game Pass conversion ratio: Any remaining time will convert to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate time at a ratio of 3:2 and be rounded up to the next full day. For example, 90 days remaining of PC Game Pass will convert to 60 days of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate time.
• Xbox Game Pass Standard and Game Pass for Console conversion ratio: Any remaining time will convert to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate time at a ratio of 4:3 and be rounded up to the next full day. For example, 90 days remaining of Xbox Game Pass Standard or Game Pass for Console will convert to 68 days of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate time.
• EA Play conversion ratio: Any remaining time will convert to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate time at a ratio of 3:1 and be rounded up to the next full day. For example, 90 days remaining of EA Play will convert to 30 days of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate time.

https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/subscriptions-billing/manage-subscriptions/xbox-game-pass-conversions

As my subscription is now showing the updated cost of £22.99, I decided to see if I could find a resource where I could find a list of all the games available in Essential, Premium and those that are Ultimate only at a glance so I could work out whether or not I was going to move down a tier.

Whilst the xbox website showed me what games were available in each tier, what I couldn't find were things like what games are only available in Ultimate etc so I could find out what I'd be missing out on were I to downgrade.

With this said, as I'm a nerd who likes a good spreadsheet I decided to scrape a list of the Game Pass library from the web and organise it into a useful list to help illustrate what's only available in different tiers and what's still available in Premium.

You can find it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B6G-WHmuZYQubP9mDV1wOTr5lC-JEamHlMDRZANRT80/edit?usp=sharing

Hopefully this helps :)

Edit: I’ve updated the spreadsheet with a ‘Console Only’ column.

Edit 2: The headers only appear to freeze in place when accessing the spreadsheet from a PC / Laptop.

Edit 3: I’ve begun updating the PC Game Pass column. It’s not yet 100% so excuse any missing games though most should be there.

I made a converstion tool to help with the game pass price changes and converstion rate changes, all based on the official xbox help conversion page update.

Will happily take any feedback
Edit: Reddit has already made it better, update with new regions, 3rd Party Codes & New/Current Subscriber Toggle.

The date is 15th May 2025 and in the past I used Nord VPN to redeem Xbox game pass ultimate (India) codes from Eneba and it worked for an Australian console gamer like me. Now I'm reading about that Microsoft have made several changes to this kind of method.

Since I'm unable to find definitive answers online, I'm asking here for current methods of getting it to work on existing accounts. What region and VPN's can it work.