Xbox Game Pass may get cheaper – for cloud gaming at least, but we always end up paying in other ways

The time-honored corporation tactic of hiking prices by loads and then dropping them a little so we all feel grateful for it is one we have all subconsciously become used to in recent times. I remember when TV used to be free and water just came out of the tap.

As far as price hikes go, Xbox Game Pass hasn’t been the worst offender in recent times – I am looking at you, Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, and so on – but it has still had a price hike in recent times. There are fears also that, as it continues to grow, another may be around the corner to help offset all the big acquisitions of the likes of Call of Duty, and that people will just keep paying it because it offsets having to fork out $70/$80 for a game on launch.

So then it may be slightly surprising, and maybe a bit unbelievable, that there is talk of a lower-cost Xbox Game Pass for players who play using the cloud gaming service. It was even mooted that there might be a free tier if you were prepared to be served ads.

“One of the things we see is there’s a lot of players who use Game Pass Ultimate to access the cloud, whether that’s the primary way they play, or an additional way to play on the go,” so says Jason Ronald, Microsoft’s VP of Next Generation.

“I think for us, it really opens up the opportunity to make it much more affordable and make it more accessible to players. Whether that’s going into new regions, or new ways to actually access the cloud.”

So okay, I am suspicious. Cloud gaming must cost Microsoft money. Servers, bandwidth, and the like are not free. The mentions of new regions are interesting; we have heard this before as part of the Xbox Everywhere spiel. You may not be able to easily afford a new console in some parts of the world, but “hey, how about this on your phone, with ads?” And that’s probably fine, but it also suggests that this cheaper tier may not be for everyone anyway.

And if it is, you can be sure that somehow we are going to pay for it. If you introduce a tier that is cheaper than normal, people will jump ship from the regular tiers unless you make it unappealing for many with ads, just like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and so on.

More likely, we could get some new tier prices with everything going up a few dollars, and this new ad-funded cloud tier sitting a couple of dollars below where Ultimate was originally, so there’s literally no way for the house to lose. Spoiler alert – it never does.