It was a really dumb move to increase the Gold price especially for those who are still not on GamePass. Great that MS easily made a 180 on this decision, but still not good that they even tried to push the price increase in the first place given that their competition has lower prices and is far in the lead. It makes sense to do this if you are in the lead but not when you need to do your best to make your platform reach new audience.

I would've been totally fine with the GwG month, even without Gears 5.

two good X1 games and a non XBLA 360 game.
Don't care much about any OG Xbox game.

It seemed like adding a fifth game was meant to add more value since the price was increasing but now that the price increase isnt happening I wonder if they're gonna continue with a fifth game. I hope they do but I can aee them going back to four.

From a marketing perspective, the price increase was about squeezing more Gold users onto Game Pass, not about increasing the number of free games and increasing the value proposition per se. 

Gamers won!

Won what exactly?

Instead of achieving their goals (moving more people to game pass and/or increasing revenue from those sticking to gold) they now effectively made gold more expensive for them (set a higher expectation for the free games) while removing the F2P barrier, thus less people will get gold.

Basically moving away further from making Gamepass viable long term, or rather expediting having to increase GP subscription fees.

So far it seems only Nintendo has figured out how to make a profit in the gaming business, while Sony (barely) manages to break even and MS keeps on investing into potential profits later on. Great for gamers right now, enjoy the golden age while it lasts.


There's no defense for the nearly doubling the price like the initial plan was. But you have to wonder what will come next. Such a move comes from somewhere, and having not achieved those goals, some other way will be found.

They wanted to increase price but gamers complained so they didn't and now F2P don't need gold anymore. It seems they reacted (fast) it feels a win for gamers and not a loss.  If they kept the price it would have been a loss.

And are you really applauding that? The kind of things Nintendo gets away with makes me sick.

And you are correct, there was no defense for MS nearly doubling the price like they initially intended, but at least they have shown once more that they actually listen.

Some people will probably never move to GamePass and will just continue to pay for Gold to access multiplayer. It's cheaper than GamePass, so why should they pay more for something they don't use. It wasn't a good idea not matter what the initial plan was.

I'm just saying it's merely a stay of execution. The F2P unlock was merely meant to soften the blow of the price increase, however the ridiculous increase caused so much backlash that MS had to reverse that decision asap and still do the F2P unlock to win back goodwill.

It's been in the works for a long time, back in July MS discontinued the 12 month digital subscription and those will likely disappear from retail as well. They were meant to disappear next week but I guess now simply as long as stock lasts.

All those cheap upgrade plans are there to get people to convert to GP. I guess it wasn't going fast enough or is stagnating, hence the price increase of Gold to get more people to move to GP.

This 'win' is not going to change those plans. MS is a business after all, not a service running on tax payer money.