Today's Game Pass Change Is A Great One. The Next One Will Hurt.

Starting today, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers enjoy something few ever get to experience in the age of the subscription model: a price drop. It's been six months since the price of Game Pass Ultimate went up to $30 a month, but under the new Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma, the cost is unexpectedly falling back down to $23 a month. It's not without caveats--this tier no longer includes Call of Duty entries on their respective launch days--but for the likely millions of players who subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate and don't play Call of Duty, this is only a good thing.

This news comes less than a week after an internal memo written by Sharma spoke to how the price of Game Pass had risen too much. In the wake of today's official price reduction, the "leaked" internal memo feels more like an intended tease, otherwise known as a controlled leak. That's all fine by me. It's a tried-and-true means of communicating your brand's ideas to the public, and it's at least interesting to begin to see what shape Xbox will take under Sharma. But controlled leak or not, today's headline feels like it guarantees another major change is coming, and it's that next one that worries me.

Since 2017, Game Pass has changed many times, but one figurative line it hasn't crossed yet is the involvement of specific types of ads. There are many ways these could be implemented, from picture-in-picture or banner ads to video ads that interrupt gameplay, and more. Plenty of games, even some in Game Pass, do use ads, but they're usually of the sort that players don't balk at. I don't want my time with NBA 2K to be interrupted by an ad for the new Jordans, but I don't mind that there's a Jordan store inside the series' social hub, The City.