FTC criticizes Xbox's recent Game Pass price increase, states it is "consumer harm"

by Danny Craig  · 
FTC criticizes Xbox's recent Game Pass price increase, states it is "consumer harm"
Activision

Microsoft recently announced that Xbox Game Pass would be subject to another price increase as well as structural changes, prompting the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to claim that this is "exactly the sort of consumer harm" it warned about.

The details:

  • Earlier this month, Game Pass saw a price increase across all tiers, raising the annual price of its core tier to $75 from $60 and the Ultimate tier to $20 per month. Xbox also confirmed that it had discontinued Game Pass for Console in favor of a "standard" tier that would not allow users to access first-party releases on launch day via the service.

  • As expected, many players were not thrilled with the change, and it appears that the FTC is no exception. In a new filing (via Eurogamer), the agency refers to Game Pass as a "degraded" product, claiming that the situation is harmful to consumers and an example of why it is important to "halt mergers to fully evaluate their likely competitive effects."

  • Microsoft plans to include Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 as a day one title for Game Pass later this year, as stated during its acquisition of Activision last year, but previously said that the service's price would not increase as a result of the $69 billion deal. The agency added that it believes Microsoft's changes are "inconsistent" with what it promised during the trial, making similar claims about the company's layoffs earlier this year.

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