Double the Price for the Same Old Service
UPDATE: An update to this article can be found here.
Fans may want to rethink their Xbox Live Subscriptions as Microsoft announces her pricing tiers for the service. Among the new pricing options include a 6-month subscription for a cost of $59.99 USD, or $119.98 USD for a full year–double the cost of what a one year subscription used to be.
According to Xbox, this will mark the first price increase the service has seen in over a decade for some markets.
“Periodically, we assess the value and pricing of our services to reflect changes in regional marketplaces and to continue to invest in the Xbox community; we’ll be making price adjustments for Xbox Live Gold in select markets. In many markets, the price of Xbox Live Gold has not changed for years and in some markets, it hasn’t changed for over 10 years.”
The service, which enables the ability to play games online, in addition to adding a small selection of free titles delivered monthly, will see a small price increase for the one and three month tiers. One month subscriptions will only be increasing by $1 for a total cost of $10.99 a month. Three month subscriptions will be increasing by $5 for a total of $29.99 for three months.
While the increase is small for players opting in for the shorter terms, new subscribers will have to pay $119.98 a year at the cheapest option available, which is double what the year-long subscription used to cost before Microsoft discontinued it.
Thankfully, existing 12-month and 6-month subscribers will not be affected by the pricing increase.
In their blog post announcing the price increases, Xbox encourages players to convert their remaining Xbox Live Gold to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which includes Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Game Pass, and Xbox Game Pass for PC.
“If you’d like to upgrade your Gold membership to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate your remaining Gold time will also convert directly to Ultimate (up to 36 months). For example, if you have 11 months of Xbox Live Gold now, and you upgrade to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, those 11 months convert to 11 months of Ultimate at no additional cost.”
Whether this is just a necessary price increase to reflect the change in market, or a tactic to encourage the players to subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, some fans are disheartened to hear of the price increase. What do you think? Will you be continuing your Xbox Live Gold subscription? Let us know down in the comments, or hit us up on Twitter or Facebook.