GameStop Defies Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Price Hike, Continues Selling at Previous Prices
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Key points
- GameStop announces that it will keep selling Xbox Game Pass Ultimate cards for $19.99.
- Microsoft recently raised the price of the Ultimate tier subscription to $29.99.
- This price rise has led to a lot of people cancelling their subscriptions.
In a way that seemingly defies Microsoft, GameStop announced on Oct. 2, 2025, that it will keep selling Xbox Game Pass Ultimate cards for $19.99 instead of the recently price-hiked $29.99 that Microsoft announced.
Microsoft announced the price hike in an Xbox Wire post, saying that all tiers of the subscription will receive a price hike. Essential will now cost $9.99, Premium $14.99 and Ultimate will now be $29.99.
This has led to a lot of dissatisfaction from the Microsoft and Xbox crowd, to the point where players have rushed to cancel their Game Pass subscription. In fact, this resulted in the Game Pass page crashing due to the amount of traffic it received.
GameStop’s announcement regarding the retention of the previous price over the recent one was a welcome surprise to players still planning to benefit from the Game Pass. However, there are also questions about its sustainability, due to the store purchasing more cards at a higher price and selling them for lower once the current stock has been sold.
Xbox Game Pass is Microsoft’s subscription model that allows players to play games in their catalog for free. As mentioned above, there are three tiers to this subscription: Essential, Premium and Ultimate.
