Microsoft Slashes Xbox Game Pass Prices, Delays New Call of Duty Access

Xbox just made Game Pass cheaper for the people paying the most, but the trade-off is a big one: new Call of Duty games will no longer arrive on day one in Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass. Ultimate dropped from $29.99 to $22.99 a month, saving subscribers $7 immediately, while PC Game Pass fell from $16.49 to $13.99, a $2.50 cut.

Microsoft said the pricing change came from player feedback and that “there isn’t a single model that’s best for everyone,” adding that it would “continue to listen and learn.” The new pricing took effect right away on April 21, 2026, and so did the new rule for Call of Duty. Future entries in the franchise will not launch in Game Pass at release. Microsoft says they will be added during the following holiday season, roughly a year later. Existing Call of Duty games already in the catalog are unaffected.

For subscribers, the math is simple. If you stayed on Ultimate, you now pay less each month and still get hundreds of games on console and PC, current Call of Duty titles, in-game benefits, online console multiplayer, unlimited Xbox Cloud Gaming, and major day-one releases. If you were using Game Pass mainly to play the newest Call of Duty immediately, that value proposition just changed. The new policy draws a hard line between the rest of the library and Microsoft’s biggest shooter series.

The move lands after Microsoft’s October 1, 2025 Game Pass overhaul, when it introduced Essential, Premium, and Ultimate tiers. At that time, Microsoft said Ultimate would include more than 75 day-one releases a year, more than 400 games across console, PC, and cloud, plus EA Play, Fortnite Crew, and Ubisoft+ Classics. The new cut looks less like a simple rollback than a reset in how Microsoft wants to price its top tier.

That reset also follows a leaked April 2026 memo in which Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma reportedly said Game Pass had become too expensive for players and needed a better value equation. Microsoft is now trying to hold onto the subscription pitch while protecting the economics of a franchise that has been central to that pitch. Xbox’s own comparison page still promotes day-one access for new Xbox-published and select third-party games, which makes the loss of day-one Call of Duty stand out as a deliberate exception, not a routine policy change.