GameStop promises to keep selling Game Pass Ultimate for $19.99 — company defies Microsoft's 50% price increase

(Image credit: Future / Microsoft)

Just days after Microsoft announced a series of sweeping changes to its Game Pass subscription tiers, stalwart brick-and-morter vendor GameStop has announced it will continue to offer the service at its original price of $19.99, defying the company and its 50% price hike for Game Pass Ultimate.

In a now viral post on X, the company announced it would continue to sell Game Pass Ultimate for less than 20 bucks both in-store and online. That means you can swipe a one-month sub for considerably less than Microsoft is now asking, or grab a three-month membership for $59.99.

Get Game Pass Ultimate at its old price of $19.99 at GameStop

Microsoft's planned price increases have generally been met with fury by gamers. While the company raised prices last year simply to reflect challenging economic headwinds, this year's increases do at least herald material changes to the platform, whether that will be enough to convince gamers to keep paying for the service is another matter.

Microsoft's Game Pass tiers are now Essential, Premium, and Ultimate. The latter now comes with 400 games across PC, console, and cloud, and over 75 launch day titles annually, notably including Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, High on Life 2, Keeper, Ninja Gaiden 4, and The Outer Worlds 2. Ultimate now also includes Ubisoft+ Classics, with titles that include Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and others.

The Premium tier remains $14.99, but only has some 200 titles, and also doesn't include the same launch day commitment.

U.S. customers can also grab 1-month Game Pass Ultimate codes for $19.99 from Amazon. While GameStop has made a big deal out of keeping prices fixed despite the increase, whether this is sustainable or not remains to be seen. The company is making enough noise to suggest it may be willing to eat the increase put on the service by Microsoft, or will simply keep selling Game Pass until it runs out of codes.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages.

Stephen is Tom's Hardware's News Editor with almost a decade of industry experience covering technology, having worked at TechRadar, iMore, and even Apple over the years. He has covered the world of consumer tech from nearly every angle, including supply chain rumors, patents, and litigation, and more. When he's not at work, he loves reading about history and playing video games.

11 Comments Comment from the forums

MooseMuffin

Well that doesn't make any sense. I guess they're saying they have a glut of pre-paid codes they'll sell through at their current price?
Reply
Heat_Fan89

MooseMuffin said:
Well that doesn't make any sense. I guess they're saying they have a glut of pre-paid codes they'll sell through at their current price?
Yeah, that's probably it because this is Gamestop we're talking about. I don't see them taking a $10 loss on each card.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmetameme.app%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F04%2F13.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=8865864833f1a10ba2d5d421ab32ccfb0a1d91386cfffb99868f7c531eba8cc7
Reply
tamalero

Heat_Fan89 said:
Yeah, that's probably it because this is Gamestop we're talking about. I don't see them taking a $10 loss on each card.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmetameme.app%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F04%2F13.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=8865864833f1a10ba2d5d421ab32ccfb0a1d91386cfffb99868f7c531eba8cc7
this lol.

Also makes me wonder if the price is still lower when you buy them in bulk.
Hence why Microsoft is only punishing direct customers.
Reply
Amdlova

It's a way to keep the customers... you loose something but sell others things to take the money back.
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hotaru251

publicity if nothing else & it being cheaper is all that matters to the end user.
Reply
namtrooper81

Admin said:
GameStop says it will continue to offer Xbox Game Pass Ultimate at its old price of $19.99 after Microsoft raised the price by 50%.

GameStop promises to keep selling Game Pass Ultimate for $19.99 — company defies Microsoft's 50% price increase : Read more
I suspect you hit the nail on the head. Once they are finished running through their old stock they will fall in with the raised prices. Me suspects.
Reply
JayGau

For sure they won't buy 30$ passes and sell them 20$. Even for publicity, there's no way they gonna do that. It's clearly a (deceptive) way to look good by saying "hey customers, we like you so much that we won't increase the price on the 20$ passes we already bought and still have in stock". And people will be like "thank you so much Gamestop, finally a company that cares about its customers".

P. S. No need to tell me they don't buy them at those prices. I know that, but since I have no idea how much they pay for their bulks I use the customer prices.
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Heat_Fan89

GameStop has been a plague to the videogame industry, more so than XBOX Game Pass. They are 99% the reason developers, publishers and platform holders transitioned to digital sales.
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bill001g

Hard to say when the vast majority of their income/profit is from increase value of the bitcoins they purchased when they issued more stock and sold it to the idiots follow social media trends.

When almost nobody buy a physical copy of game and many games are released as download only I can't see how this store has lasted even this long. The whole business model is selling used games which no longer really exists. Game console etc if you want to buy them in a physical store are cheaper at wallmart or even best buy.

Just a month ago I saw something about them trying to get current shareholder to buy gamestop stock warrants and they plan to buy more bitcoin with that money.
Reply
BwwwJ1st

I have a Xbox X and PC and currently pay $20 per month for the ultimate plan.

I cancelled my membership for several months when it switched to $20 from $15.

My main reason for keeping the membership is for when my children and others visit; I had recently reactivated my membership at the current $20 price.

I don’t know what plan or if any I will continue to pay for now, definitely not the $30 months plan.

!!!I was able to pick up and activate/add/use a $20 ultimate card from my local Walmart yesterday!!!
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