I have long championed Gamepass as a great value, but as of this week that now comes to an end. Your mileage may vary here, but their newly announced price hike to bring the service to $30 a month firmly tips the scales out of balance with any value I’ve gotten from the service.

I went and took a look at the games I’ve played through Gamepass this year (significant time, not just a 5-10 min peek), and I then added up their full, day-one retail costs assuming I had simply bought them outright. The cost roughly broke even with what I paid for the year of service, and in a tie I’m willing to give Gamepass the win just to recognize the convenience it afforded me to try games to see if I was into them.

But at $30 a month, I no longer feel confident that I’m going to play enough of the games they offer for the price to make sense, and we’ve now crossed the threshold where I’m better off buying the few games I want directly from the publisher (and owning them outright, which has never been a big concern of mine, but it doesn’t hurt).

I actually stacked my Gamepass subscription last month (bought a year’s worth of EA Play subscriptions, and converted them to Gamepass Ultimate), so I’ll have the service until late 2026. But after that point, unless something changes in the next year (and the fact that the ‘change subscription’ page for GamePass has been crashing all afternoon suggests enough people are canceling to perhaps influence change), me and Xbox will be pretty much done.