With every move it makes this year, my suspicion that Microsoft is looking to scrap the Xbox label grows stronger. Seriously, tell me how any of these decisions make the brand more attractive to potential customers. First and foremost, no good first-party games despite buying up half the AAA industry. Second, the price hikes on old hardware. Now, not only is Game Pass getting more expensive than its worth, but now users can’t even take advantage of the menial discount they got from it. Make this make sense!

As reported by IGN, Microsoft has confirmed that it has discontinued the discounts on games and DLC that Game Pass Ultimate subscribers have been enjoying since the service started. It was a blanket perk that, I imagine, was meant to sweeten the deal a little bit more for those who didn’t want to rely entirely on Game Pass to maintain “their” library. Well, that’s gone now and its place, users simply get more “rewards points” to eventually spend on gift cards and the like (assuming users can reasonably save up enough points to do so).

Before diving a bit deeper into this, I just want to point out that neither Sony nor Nintendo (especially Nintendo) are doing much better in terms of being consumer friendly this year. Nintendo’s pulling every money-grubbing move in the book with Switch 2, and Sony has also done price hikes on hardware just because it could. Nobody is innocent here, so I’m not exactly only calling out Microsoft for bad business.

All that said, I’m wondering how Microsoft can think that it’ll retain customers doing these things, much less attract new ones. Games have and always will sell hardware, yet it increased the price of a now old system despite having very few games worth owning that system for. It’s sitting on studios and IP, yet doing nothing with them and yet still having the gall to charge more for everything, and even removing the last decent piece of value left in the now overly expensive Game Pass service.

For the first couple of years of the service, I thought it was a good deal. That was however, based on the assumption that it would keep adding high-quality titles that I’d want to play. Yet, they didn’t and then rolled Xbox Live into it and started charging more. Years later, there still aren’t many top-shelf games on there, and many of those that were there have since been removed.

And now they want $30 a month for the same service, but now with even less value? Yeah, no. I stopped using Game Pass after the Halo Infinite debacle and it looks like there’s never going to be a reason to go back.

This is why I’m convinced that Microsoft is trying to kill Xbox in a roundabout way. There’s no way that Game Pass is profitable, and the systems themselves haven’t been popular since the end of the Xbox 360’s lifecycle. They must think that both the brand and the service need to go, but not before they can squeeze every penny they can out of those who can’t bear to cut their losses and move on before it’s too late.

This is a reminder that all of these subscriptions and even “free” services are, in fact, not good deals at all, and the companies that run them are absolutely not your friends. Don’t give your loyalty to Xbox, Sony, Nintendo, Steam or any brand. None of them will ever care about you. All you are is a wallet and possibly some free marketing. So instead, do what’s right for you! Support your own wallet and enjoyment! Don’t “support” these giant companies and the practices they employ to take advantage of you.

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What’s your take on Microsoft’s Xbox decisions lately? How do you feel about the state of AAA gaming?

Image is promotional artwork