GameStop Goes Guerrilla On Xbox With Old GamePass Prices

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It’s been a bad year for the Xbox brand.

On top of recent layoffs and studio shutdowns – including one just this week – the company revealed that Xbox Game Pass, their most popular service, is increasing its monthly price by 50%. And, to prevent customers from offsetting the cost, they’ve also stated that reward points can no longer be used to pay for a Game Pass subscription.

Microsoft, having reported record earnings for Xbox earlier this year, is framing this price hike as a step towards developing Game Pass further. This announcement followed comments from Sarah Bond, Xbox president, who stated that Game Pass is both profitable and brought in $5 billion in revenue over the past year. Experts in the industry agree that Game Pass is, in fact, a successful and profitable service.

To be honest, 2023 has been a strong year for games launching directly into Game Pass. However, the annual cost of a Game Pass subscription – over $360, which is actually more than what the Xbox Series S cost when it first came out – feels pretty high. This is especially true when you consider that many of the best Game Pass titles weren’t originally sold at full price. It’s a bit of a trade-off.

We’re not the only ones to think that, as an unlikely ally agrees with us.

GameStop Is Still Selling Game Pass Subscriptions For $19.99

Following a day of criticizing Microsoft for raising the price of Game Pass (and they really did!), GameStop shifted gears and announced they continue to offer Game Pass subscriptions both in their stores and online, but at the previous, lower price.

This was, again, in between taking the opportunity to take some shots across the aisle.

It wasn’t surprising that many people immediately mentioned the low amounts GameStop used to offer for trade-ins. As someone who used to manage a GameStop store, I get it – the values assigned to trade-ins and the prices of used games were often quite frustrating. However, it’s good to see we can still get a fair price for Game Pass, particularly since the website for canceling Game Pass subscriptions was experiencing issues yesterday due to high traffic.

On other Game Pass updates, I recently put together a list of excellent games that make an Xbox Game Pass subscription worthwhile, which now seems a bit strange to mention. These games are still fantastic, and if you’re stocking up on subscription cards from GameStop, it’s definitely a good value!

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2025-10-02 18:39