Microsoft Game Pass price cut in South Africa
Months after hiking prices for its Xbox Game Pass plans by as much as 109%, Microsoft announced significant price cuts for two of the service’s tiers, affecting users worldwide, including in South Africa.
The company announced on Tuesday that Game Pass Ultimate monthly prices will drop by R110, and PC Game Pass will decrease by R40, as Microsoft’s gaming strategy shifted following leadership changes.
Another major shift was that Call of Duty titles will no longer be included in Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch. Upcoming titles in the series will now be sold individually at launch.
In 2025, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft lost $300 million in console and PC sales on the Call of Duty franchise after adding it to Game Pass as day-one titles in an effort to increase subscribers.
Bloomberg reported that the October 2025 price hike was a direct consequence of the failed Call of Duty on Game Pass experiment. Now, upcoming Call of Duty games will hit Game Pass a year after launch.
As of 22 April, the prices of Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass in South Africa were reduced, while the Essential and Premium tiers have remained the same since the October price increase.
Essential was previously known as “Game Pass Core”, and was increased by 76% last year, from R79 to R139 per month. Meanwhile, Premium, formerly “Standard”, was hiked from R149 to R199 per month.
The prices for all the tiers in South Africa are as follows:
- Xbox Game Pass Essential — R139 per month, first month for R19
- Xbox Game Pass Premium — R199 per month, first 14 days for R19
- Xbox Game Pass Ultimate — R239 per month
- Xbox Game Pass PC — R209 per month
With the Ultimate tier, South African Xbox and PC owners gain access to the company’s full library of games, more than 400 titles, and new games on launch, excluding Call of Duty.
PC Game Pass subscribers gain access to Microsoft’s PC game library, which includes hundreds of titles, several new games on the day they launch, and third-party games.
| Game Pass plan | New 2026 price | Nov. 2025 price | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xbox Game Pass Essential | R139 | R139 | — |
| Xbox Game Pass Premium | R199 | R199 | — |
| PC Game Pass | R209 | R249 | -16% |
| Xbox Game Pass Ultimate | R239 | R349 | -32% |
Xbox under new management
Changes to the Xbox Game Pass pricing strategy were driven by Microsoft’s new gaming CEO, Asha Sharma, who indicated in a leaked internal memo that she planned to lower prices for the service.
“Game Pass Ultimate has become too expensive for too many players,” she said in an X/Twitter post announcing the price cuts.
“We’ll keep learning and evolving Game Pass to better match what matters to players.”
In the official announcement, the company indicated that it was still struggling to find a “one size fits all” model for Game Pass due to its large player base.
“Our players cover a wide breadth of geographies, preferences, and tastes, so while there isn’t a single model that’s best for everyone, this change responds to a lot of feedback we’ve gotten so far,” it said.
Sharma took over from long-time Xbox head Phil Spencer in February amid ongoing difficulties finding new ways to drive profits, despite massive acquisitions in its business since 2020.
In 2023, Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard for a record-setting $69 billion deal, following a nearly two-year battle with global regulators that threatened to scrap the transaction due to antitrust concerns.
It is still the biggest acquisition in gaming history. It was preceded by the $7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda Softworks in 2020, the maker of The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and the new Doom series.
Sharma was formerly an executive at Meta Platforms. She immediately promised gamers that Xbox would return to its traditional roots and refocus on the console platform and exclusive titles.
This was previously the long-running strategy for the gaming division, the largest in the United States, before Spencer and then-Xbox president Sarah Bond launched the “Everything is an Xbox” campaign.
Microsoft was also still working on its latest upcoming console, codenamed “Project Helix”, which was set to succeed the Xbox Series X as the brand’s most powerful machine to date.
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