Report: Xbox's new CEO wants to reduce price of Game Pass and is exploring new tier options

Microsoft is reportedly looking at ways to reduce the price of its Xbox Game Pass subscription, including the idea of lower-priced tiers.

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Xbox's CEO Asha Sharma has supercharged the brand with new energy, signalling a vitalized era for the entertainment giant. With an enviable stable of talent and a slate of billion-dollar mega-hit franchises, Xbox has all of the IP that it needs to belt out products for decades, but its services, infrastructure, and hardware have to keep up.

The leadership transition at Microsoft has given way to new possible business decisions from Xbox's fresh-faced commander-in-chief. Sharma has already promised a new Xbox console, the hybridized Windows-based Project Helix, and ignited hype among fans. Now it's said that Sharma is seeking to grow Xbox Game Pass, but perhaps not at the cost of the entire Xbox business as it had before when the subscription had been part of Satya Nadella's performance compensation package.

New reports from The Information say that Xbox's new CEO was exploring ways to reduce the cost of Game Pass for users, potentially even adding lower-priced options below the $10 per month Essential tier. Right now, Essential is the least favored version of Game Pass, bundling online multiplayer with a smaller selection of 50 older catalog games.

While the Essential tier is where people can actually stay for a month or two, it's likely that any lower-cost tier below it would act as a gateway/sampler platter that whets the appetite for the main course--the $30 a month Game Pass Ultimate.

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The news would be welcome for Xbox gamers, especially after recent Game Pass price hikes.

Microsoft has raised the price of Game Pass Ultimate 3 separate times over the past 3 years, with the first happening almost immediately after it closed its $75 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard King.

The second price hike happened a year later in July 2024, pushing Ultimate to $20 a month. Then finally in October 2025, the same month it launched The Outer Worlds 2, Microsoft raised the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to $30 a month.

No decisions have been made around Game Pass just yet, but if anything we could see a free ad-supported version of Xbox Cloud Gaming being offered to players. In exchange for watching ads, players would get an hour or so of uninterrupted free game streaming.

This should be supplementary to Game Pass, though, and is more representative of cloud gaming rather than the Game Pass service; while it's bundled into Game Pass, Xbox Cloud Gaming is apparently poised to become its own separate-but-connected thing, complete with its own way to make money from advertisements.