75%
Probable
Amidst constant news of price increases for gaming hardware and services, Microsoft did the unexpected yesterday by lowering the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which had become too expensive for too many players, according to Xbox head Asha Sharma, at the cost of new Call of Duty games that will only hit the service one year after their launch. Reportedly, this is only the beginning, as according to Windows Central's Jez Corden, Microsoft's long-term goal for its subscription service is flexibility.
"Microsoft sources tell me that the longer-term goal for Xbox Game Pass is to make it more flexible," Corden wrote in a fresh report. "A sort of 'pick your own plan' formula for Xbox Game Pass is on the cards, essentially, where users can effectively decide what packages of content they want to see as part of their plan."
While this pick-your-own-plan formula is still under consideration, it seems like things may already be moving in this direction, as "Duet" and "Triton" codenames for Xbox Game Pass have been leaked via the company's back-end APIs. As such, it seems like it may be possible in the future for users to remove whatever they don't need, such as Xbox Cloud Gaming or Ubisoft and EA games, for a cheaper subscription price, in a move that would turn "The Netflix of gaming into the cable package of gaming," as ResetERA forums member GPU pointed out.
Although this would inevitably add some complications to the service and likely disrupt the current subscription tiers, there's no denying that this level of flexibility would make the service more enticing to users who don't make much use of certain offerings, such as the aforementioned Xbox Cloud Gaming, and who could mostly be interested in the Xbox Game Studios Day 1 releases, which has been, for a long time, one of the most, if not the most enticing feature of the service.
With the Xbox Project Helix setting out to be a rather different gaming system than its predecessors, it will be interesting to see whether even Xbox Game Pass will get a sort of "next-gen" overhaul in the coming months.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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