Xbox Cuts Game Pass Ultimate to $22.99, Pushes New Call of Duty Entries Back About a Year

Immediate price cuts with a clear tradeoff

Microsoft reset the headline numbers for Xbox Game Pass on April 21, 2026. According to Xbox Wire, Game Pass Ultimate drops immediately from $29.99 to $22.99 a month, while PC Game Pass falls from $16.49 to $13.99. Microsoft notes that prices may vary by region, but in the US this is a material rollback, especially after last year's higher pricing left many players treating the service as expensive by subscription standards.

The price cut is not free. Microsoft also says that, beginning this year, future Call of Duty releases will no longer join either plan at launch. Instead, new entries will be added during the following holiday season, roughly a year later, while existing Call of Duty titles already in the library stay available.

What still remains in the package

Xbox is not repositioning the service as a stripped-down budget tier. The company says Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will still have access to hundreds of games across console and PC, current Call of Duty titles already in the catalog, in-game benefits, online console multiplayer, and unlimited Xbox Cloud Gaming. The real change is more surgical: the service is cheaper, but it is no longer the launch-day home for new Call of Duty games.

That matters because Call of Duty had become the most visible symbol of how aggressive Microsoft's subscription strategy could get. Pulling it back to a delayed window changes the perceived value equation right where many players were doing the math.

Reddit reaction focused on the rollback math

The linked r/pcgaming post hit 1,817 points and 471 comments at crawl time. Top comments framed the cut less as generosity and more as a response to churn after the previous increase. A second theme was that even after the reduction, the service still sits above its older price point. A third was simple surprise: players are used to subscriptions going up, not down.

That reaction is useful because it shows what the announcement actually changed in public perception. The debate was not "is Game Pass cheap now?" It was whether Microsoft had effectively traded launch-day Call of Duty for a partial rollback and whether that trade is fair enough to bring people back.

Why this matters

For gaming services, price, content timing, and platform strategy are tightly linked. Microsoft's April 21 move makes that link explicit. The company is lowering the recurring fee while narrowing one of the service's biggest premium hooks. That is a clearer value proposition than the previous version, even if some players will read it as a retreat.

The practical takeaway is straightforward. If you value lower monthly cost more than launch-day access to new Call of Duty entries, the new Game Pass structure is better than it was a week ago. If launch-day Call of Duty was the reason you paid the premium, Microsoft has formally changed that contract. Either way, the numbers are now concrete: $22.99 for Ultimate, $13.99 for PC, and a roughly one-year wait for future Call of Duty additions.

Source: Xbox Wire · Reddit discussion