Why, in the Year of our Lord 2024, does multiplayer functionality still cost extra?
After the FTC submitted a filing criticizing Microsoft's Game Pass price increases, the Xbox parent company responded with a letter of its own to the US Ninth Circuit Court, first spotted by Tom Warren of The Verge. In it, Microsoft argues that the new cheapest console Game Pass tier is actually a better deal for consumers despite the $3 per month price hike, because it also unlocks online multiplayer functionality now—otherwise $10 a month on Xbox.
"Earlier this month, Microsoft announced changes to its gaming subscription service, Game Pass, to provide consumers valuable options at different price points," the letter begins. "Microsoft is offering a new service tier, Game Pass Standard, which offers access to hundreds of back-catalog games and [emphasis theirs] multiplayer functionality for $14.99 a month.
"It is wrong to call this a 'degraded' version of the discontinued Game Pass for Console offering. That discontinued product did not offer multiplayer functionality, which had to be purchased separately for an additional $9.99/month (making the total cost $20.98/month). While Game Pass ultimate's price will increase from $16.99 to $19.99/month, the service will offer more value through many new games available 'day-and-date.'"
The Microsoft filing also argues that the FTC was not so concerned with subscription pricing in the deliberations over the company's historic acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and that it has kept up its end of the bargain by continuing to release Call of Duty on PlayStation. Before we move on, here's a quick refresher on the price and content changes coming to Game Pass:
Whether or not Microsoft's logic holds up in court, as a gamer, it's crazy-making to see the company trumpet multiplayer as a great value replacement for day one game access. The word "gaslight" gets thrown around too much these days, so I'll say they're pissing on our collective leg and telling us it's raining. Online multiplayer is a basic functionality we just get for free on PC, and the fact that Sony and Microsoft gate it behind a subscription service feels like some kind of barbaric anachronism—what is this, 2006?
The $10 value that is the supposed saving grace of Game Pass Standard is an arbitrary rent set by Microsoft. Meanwhile, the $20 value figure cited by Microsoft's lawyers as the price of separate Game Pass for Console and Xbox Live subscriptions is particularly amusing, since that's now just the new price of Game Pass Ultimate.
None of this is good for gamers, and it speaks to the fact that, despite an exciting slate of upcoming games from a myriad of proven, well-loved studios, Xbox is not doing well. Game Pass is not growing like Microsoft would like it to, nowhere close to on-pace for the company's stated goal of having 100 million subscribers by 2030. Its value to consumers has suffered as Microsoft's wave of acquisitions has yet to materialize into a corresponding wave of hit games, and now the company is deliberately making Game Pass a worse deal—a seeming shift from the "acquire new users" phase to the "pump them for all they're worth" one all digital subscription services seem to uniformly follow.
While Xbox is not anywhere near in danger of bankruptcy, it faces an equally dangerous and far more nebulous challenge: justifying its big bets on Game Pass and billions of dollars of studio acquisitions, even as both have shown questionable returns. I worry about this because so much of the industry, including studios I love like Obsidian, is tied up in Xbox now, and Microsoft has already demonstrated an alarming eagerness to shutter beloved studios and lay off vast swathes of developers.
