Things have not been going too well for Xbox and the recent changes to Xbox Game Pass. The price increase to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate has rubbed everyone the wrong way, and the changes to tiers of the service have been questionable to most people. Being a subscriber to Xbox Game Pass is getting tougher, even with many of the benefits that come with being part of it. But one aspect of Xbox Game Pass that has always been supplemental for most players was PC Game Pass, which also got some changes with the recent updates.
For what it was, PC Game Pass was a good service for people who owned a decent enough PC setup to play many of the games that were available in the library that Game Pass offered. But the majority of people who end up subscribing to the service do so to play games on their Xbox Series X/S console, even though the games to play on PC are a little different. While most Xbox players could dive into Gears of War: Reloaded and Black Ops 7, those on PC Game Pass had a number of PC-specific titles that were readily available. But what little value PC Game Pass had to the majority of people feel like it’s been lost with the price increase to Xbox Game Pass, and there’s hardly any reason to care about it.
Price getting increased too
But not much is changing for it
While not every tier of Xbox Game Pass went up in price, two of the most relevant parts of the service did. Xbox Game Pass ultimate is now $29.99, which is up from its original $19.99 price point. But although the increase is frustrating for everyone, that tier of Game Pass did receive a number of changes that were added on to the benefits of being a subscriber. More games would become available as day 1 releases, and both Ubisoft and EA classics as part of the library. There are at least some major things that will be different with the changes that are incoming.
This cannot be said for PC Game Pass. The price of that part of the service will go up from $11.99 to $16.49 monthly, and will include Ubisoft+ classics for the library. But the majority of PC Game Pass is remaining the same, with little to nothing changing about it. People who subscribe to PC Game Pass will be paying more for what they were already getting before, especially if exploring classic Ubisoft titles from Ubisoft+ is not very relevant to someone. But what makes that extra add-on to the service questionable is how it won’t include brand-new Ubisoft titles as day 1 releases, only the classics that have been out for a while. This almost defeats the purpose of even including Ubisoft+ classics in the service, since most players would be more interested in newer Ubisoft titles.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to see the increase in price for an aspect of Game Pass that feels like a background perk. Game Pass Ultimate subscribers had access to PC Game Pass as part of their benefits, but many people wouldn’t take advantage of this unless they had a PC setup that could play those games reasonably. They were jumping onto the service for what it would give them for home consoles, not so much what it did for PC.
The supplemental Game Pass
Always been an afterthought
This is one of the major issues with PC Game Pass and its relevance in comparison to the rest of the service. It always felt like an afterthought to what Game Pass is, not a central part of being tied to the service. As stated before, most people would subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for the games they could have day 1 on their consoles, or access to newer games as they were added to the library for Xbox Series X/S. Many of these games weren’t always available on PC through PC Game Pass, and vice versa on a few titles as well. But Xbox Game Pass Ultimate was driven by those who owned a home console, and maybe had access to a PC to play games on. This was how it was commonly presented to players at various events, showcases, and whenever the company talked about what was new with Game Pass.
The sad truth is that PC players are not the dominant part of the Xbox audience, nor the central focus for what a service like Game Pass would be sustained by. Playing Xbox games that were also on PC was an extra perk, or something additional to the core experience of being in the Xbox ecosystem. It always feels like there isn’t a full commitment to PC Game Pass being a substantial part of what Xbox Game Pass could be to players.
And with prices going up and people struggling to see the value of staying with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate moving forward, PC Game Pass will suffer collateral damage from it. Even the reveal of changes to Xbox Game Pass focused more on what was going to happen to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and what everyone would have on consoles, while the PC Game Pass information wasn’t included in the big reveal and came out sometime after.
There are better options for PC players
Other ways that work out for them
For those who already have a PC setup that they play games on, they already have many more options to get their gaming fix. And it often doesn’t need to involve a subscription service every month, especially one that gets a price increase. Gaming on platforms like Steam and the Epic Games Store has a myriad of deals that enable most new titles to sell pretty cheap. You can end up finding something in the many different Steam sales that will include tons of great titles, including brand-new releases, for the same new price that we find PC Game Pass at now. From that perspective, there’s no real comparison, and it’s not a hard choice to make.
But even before the changes to Xbox Game Pass as a whole, this was always true. The majority of PC gamers have a strong footing in their Steam library or a variety of other places to pick up most of the games they’re interested in. And the best part is they don’t have to spend much. PC Game Pass may have provided a single spot to have most games readily available on the platform with a subscription, but that may not matter to PC players who have been around for a while. For the price they would pay monthly, they already had other ways of paying less and getting more to their liking.
Does that mean PC Game Pass is completely irrelevant to them? Not entirely, because there are PC players that would own an Xbox Series X/S and have a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, which gave them PC Game Pass as well. So they would have the best of both worlds. But as people decide to walk away from Game Pass and cancel their subscriptions, it doesn’t appear that PC players would really be missing out on a lot by having PC Game Pass active for them. The service just never gave everyone with a PC good enough reasons that they needed to have it, or risk missing out on what was going on there, whether it was new releases or beloved classics.
PC Game Pass is just there now
Xbox PC Game Pass has significantly lost what little value it had to gamers
