When you buy through affiliate links in our content, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn 
Xbox Game Pass users will see their subscription prices drop again — welcome news less than a year after a significant and unpopular hike. The rollback is part of a strategy being implemented by Microsoft Gaming’s new CEO, Asha Sharma. However, there is a caveat.
For the last two years, Game Pass has included new games from the Call of Duty franchise as part of the package. Now, Microsoft Gaming has confirmed it will no longer include the ever-popular shooter in the deal.
The price drop and culling of the Activision Blizzard game were leaked out last week as something that that the company was considering. Now, that decision has become reality, with the price of a subscription being slashed right alongside one of the most compelling reasons to pay for one.
The original rationale for bundling CoD in Game Pass was that it would provide enough value to boost subscriber numbers despite the price hike. However, this week’s U-turn suggests that the strategy didn’t play out at Microsoft had hoped.
Game Pass Had Become Too Expensive For Players
Before last year’s changes, Microsoft’s Game Pass had long been lauded as a great value-for-money offering, allowing subscribers to play many games for a low monthly fee. Microsoft included many of its high-value, AAA exclusives on the platform starting from the day of release, meaning you could play big titles such as Forza, Starfield, and Football Manager for just $14 per month without purchasing them outright.
So long as the cost remained comparable to the likes of Netflix, the service didn’t appear to suffer from the phenomenon of “Subscription Tourism,” where users join a service but leave quickly if they don’t find the offering engaging enough. However, in October 2025, some two years after the company acquired Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, Game Pass prices were raised by $10 a month for the only tier that included “day one” releases.
Despite the inclusion of CoD in that tier, the user backlash was swift and dramatic. The Game Pass site literally crashed under the weight of people rushing to unsubscribe from the service immediately after the announcement.
In last week’s leaked memo, Sharma admitted that “Game Pass has become too expensive.” Following that recognition, prices are heading back roughly to where they were. The Ultimate Tier, which includes everything, will cost $23 per month, down from $30.
Microsoft May Not Be Finished Yet
News is now filtering through that there may be more changes planned, including a Game Pass subscription model that lets you “bolt on” what you want. This means that if you don’t want or need Xbox Cloud Gaming (Microsoft’s remote-play service), you can just remove it. Same with the likes of Fortnite Crew.
All of these things have been added over time to increase the offering and justify price rises, but it seems the model is not working for Microsoft’s new Gaming head, who may have yet more radical changes in store for users.
Also in Games News
Australian Government compels gaming companies to reveal what they are doing to fight radicalization
Australia’s eSafety office has formally requested Microsoft, Epic Games, Steam and Roblox to provide information on how their systems prevent the spread of extremism and child grooming.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in a statement, “What we often see after these offenders make contact with children in online game environments, they then move children to private messaging services.”
“Gaming platforms are amongst the online spaces most heavily used by Australian children, functioning not only as places to play, but also as places to socialise and communicate. Our own research into children and gaming showed around 9 in 10 children aged 8 to 17 in Australia had played online games.” Ms Inman Grant continued
The statement also highlights examples of “recreations of mass shootings on Roblox” and “Islamic State-inspired games”.
“Media reports have also pointed to games in Fortnite gamifying the horrific events of the WWII Jasenovac concentration camp and the January 6th US Capitol Building riots, while Steam is reportedly a hub for a number of extreme-right communities,” concluded Inman Grant.
The companies have all been served with legally enforceable transparency notices and penalties of up to AUD$825,000 per day if companies fail to respond.
Fortnite is flirting with fully AI-led NPC interactions
The days of stilted interactions with non-human in-game characters, or NPCs in gaming parlance, may be numbered, certainly if Epic Games’ new Fortnite experiment proves a success.
Custom islands are Fortnite’s way of combating the Roblox machine – an area where creators can script experiences and even monetize them have been around for some eight years and haven’t always avoided controversy.
Now the feature is set to court it again by allowing, as an experimental feature for now, the opportunity to create NPCs with AI-generated dialog.
Previously, you would have to construct a dialog tree for your NPCs but the new system will use an AI model to best-guess the required responses.
Safety layers have been added to ensure NPCs will not give out medical advice, show romantic intentions, or breach restrictions.
Generative AI in the gaming sphere has not been well-received up to this point, so Epic will be hoping that this experimental system won’t get mired in the “AI Slop” debate.
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn acknowledges use of AI in production
A year ahead of its 2027 release, players finally got the chance to play an hour or so of the much-anticipated new game based on James S.A. Corey’s Expanse universe.
While well-received and an exciting glimpse of what’s in store, Owlcat Games has confirmed that some AI was used in the production of this snapshot, which has caused consternation among those looking forward to it.
Owlcat insists that by the time The Expanse: Osiris Reborn launches at the end of 2027, “everything in the final version will definitely 100 percent be human-made”.
Meanwhile, Google Cloud’s global director for games, Jack Buser, has claimed that almost all big game studios use AI, but not all are comfortable disclosing it.
“I think what players don’t realize is that their favorite games right now were already built with AI,” claimed Buser. “Those games have shipped. We did a survey around Gamescom last summer with studios all over the world. Roughly nine out of 10 game developers told us Yeah, we’re using it.”
“Now you’ll see other surveys from other organizations that have that more around like 40-50%. And you might ask yourself, well, that’s still a large number. It’s still almost half of the developers out there. What’s that gap? And that gap is basically the developers’ willingness to tell you whether the fact of the matter is it’s being used.”
