The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has slammed Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass price increases in a folder Last week, Microsoft revealed that it was raising prices for PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and that it planned to soon launch a new Game Pass Standard tier without day-one access to first-party Xbox games.
The FTC calls this new Game Pass Standard tier a “degraded product” because new Game Pass users won’t be able to upgrade to the $10.99 Game Pass for console, which includes day-one access to games. Instead, Xbox Game Pass Standard will sell for $14.99 and won’t include day-one games, but will include online multiplayer.
“Microsoft’s price increases and product degradation, combined with Microsoft’s reduced investment in production and product quality through layoffs, are hallmarks of a company exercising market power after the merger,” the FTC said in a filing today. “The product degradation (the removal of Microsoft’s most valuable games from its new service) combined with price increases for existing users is exactly the type of consumer harm resulting from the merger that the FTC alleges.”