Microsoft recently announced reorganizing your Xbox Game Pass subscription planssome changes that users of the service weren’t too happy about, and for good reason, as they boil down to either paying more per month or giving up what you had before to keep your monthly fee. The increase, and it is worth recalling, was already preemptively warned by many of those who opposed Microsoft’s purchase of Activison Blizzard King.

As you may recall, shortly after completing said purchase We already had the first announcement-a preview of the price increasewhich surprised few and which evidently has to do with the stratospheric price Redmond had to accept to acquire ABK. In exchange for the expected growth in the catalog of titles available on Game Pass and, as a result, more day one releases, that is, games that would arrive both on sale and in the catalog of those? available to subscribers.

So with these changes came the removal of the cheapest Game Pass subscription tier for Xbox users, an increase in the prices of the Ultimate tier and creating a new plan, called a standardwith a similar price to Ultimate before the rise, but with some limitations. No more specifics were given when this announcement was made, so we’ve been waiting until now to find out exactly what we’re talking about.

Doubts have been put to rest and this is undoubtedly not good news for those users who are not willing to pay more for their subscription, and that releases will take up to 12 months or longer to reach Game Pass standard. Yes, you read that right, a year or more, and it’s not a rumor or a leak, it was confirmed by Microsoft itself on Xbox Wire, the official blog of the platform, in which it also informs about the current status of this new subscription level (currently in testing phase), which, if there are no surprises, should debut in September.

It’s not a big deal, but day one access to games has always been one of the perks most valued by Xbox Game Pass subscribers, and it looks like Microsoft has decided to cash in on that interest using the same technique we’ve already seen across platforms these months subscription to films and series. Something I wonder how much it has to do with the increase in “illegal” downloading of movies and series. Will the same thing happen with games? If so, I certainly won’t be the one to criticize it.