Xbox lost millions of Game Pass subscribers in the months after it raised the price of its top subscription tier by 50% in October 2025, chief strategy officer Matthew Ball said at Summer Game Fest on June 8.
Ball, a games industry analyst who joined Xbox earlier this year, made the comment during an interview with Christopher Dring at The Game Business Live, as reported by GamesRadar+. He did not give an exact figure, putting the losses in the “millions” and saying they accumulated within a few months of the increase. Geoff Keighley shared a clip of the exchange on X the same day.
The October 2025 change raised Game Pass Ultimate from $19.99 to $29.99 a month and restructured the lineup into three tiers: Essential at $9.99, Premium at $14.99, and Ultimate at the new price. Microsoft tied the increase to the addition of Call of Duty on its release day, a perk meant to justify the higher cost. Cancellations followed quickly enough that the company’s cancellation page reportedly went down under the load.
A price cut and a new chief
Microsoft reversed much of the increase this spring. On April 21, the company cut Ultimate to $22.99 and PC Game Pass to $13.99, according to GeekWire. New games in the Call of Duty series will no longer reach the service on launch day under the revised terms; they arrive about a year later instead. CEO Asha Sharma wrote on X that the price had climbed beyond what many players would pay.
Sharma took over Microsoft’s gaming business in February, after Phil Spencer retired following 38 years at the company. In a note to employees, she wrote that growth slowed and subscriber loss accelerated after the pricing and product changes of the previous year, and called the price reduction “a good first step.” She told staff they would have to outwork the problem to restore durable growth.
The strain showed up in Microsoft’s results. Gaming revenue fell 9% to $5.96 billion in the holiday quarter, with Xbox content and services landing below the company’s internal projections, GeekWire reported. Microsoft last gave an official Game Pass figure of about 34 million subscribers in 2024. Before the price increases, the company had projected the service would reach 100 million subscribers by 2030.
‘Is it fixable?’
Ball said Sharma asked him whether the situation could be turned around when the two first met, and that he told her it could. “I’m a strategic optimist,” he said at the event, according to TalkEsport. He added that he found it defeatist to assume any situation could not be improved, and described the lower price as resonating with players.
Sharma has since said the changes are helping move Xbox in the right direction, with retention improving after the reduction took effect. She has not released specific subscriber numbers.
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