Streaming occupies a strange niche in the world of video games. This is a curiosity if you’re content to play on your own PC and/or console and aren’t interested in online multiplayer games, but if at least one of those things is wrong, it suddenly becomes a very attractive proposition. When I returned to the US in 2023 and my gaming PC got stuck for several weeks on a container ship somewhere near Hong Kong, I used Nvidia’s implementation to play Baldu.the door of R 3and was pleasantly surprised by the fluidity and general user-friendliness of the platform.
Microsoft offers a similar service, Xbox Cloud Gaming, as part of its Xbox Game Pass subscription. When the cloud service launched in 2020, subscribers were promised free, unlimited streaming, but since it’s 2026 and we can’t have nice things, those terms have changed. Last September, Microsoft announced that subscriber access to Xbox Cloud Gaming would soon become neither free nor unlimited. Instead, starting in November, subscribers will get a set number of free hours each month, based on the service level they pay for: Game Pass Ultimate (which costs $23 per month) gives you 15 hours, Game Pass Premium ($15 per month) gives you 10 hours, and Game Pass Essential ($10 per month) gives you 5 hours. Once these hours have expired, additional hours must be purchased.
So how much will they cost? Well, it seems that the guinea pigs for the new model are the “Xbox Insiders who do not have an active Game Pass subscription”, who have the privilege of having “a first look at the new option before its wider rollout in November”. The “launch launch price” that these lucky insiders are getting their first look at is: 10 hours for $3.99, 25 hours for $7.99, and 50 hours for $11.99.
Part of the value proposition of Game Pass is that a subscription provides access to a decent library of games, allowing you to play games you don’t actually own. (Well, technically none of us own Nothing(but you know what I mean: games that you didn’t pay to buy.) But the Xbox Store also works like Steam/GOG/etc in the sense that you can pay to buy games that are not in the Game Pass library. And the thing is, this new model applies to everything: if you want to stream games through Xbox’s Cloud Gaming service, whether they’re part of the Game Pass library or games you’ve purchased yourself, it’s going to cost you.
That means the worst-case scenario looks like this: In September, before these changes were announced, you paid the full purchase price for a game that’s not in the Game Pass library assuming you’d be able to play it via cloud streaming. Maybe your hardware doesn’t meet the specifications for this fancy new game. Maybe your gaming PC exploded/got stuck on a ship/a component failed. Maybe you just want to be able to play it in bed on your laptop. Never mind. Now you see that in addition to the cost of the game you purchased, you will be paying per hour to play it once your monthly allotment of hours is up. If that’s the case with you, I imagine you’re not particularly amused.
The changes also promise to be a nightmare for Fortnite-addicted kids whose parents have decided the family console will be an Xbox. (One can only imagine how much shit could have hit the fan if something like Concordan online multiplayer game that charged a purchase price on top of the usual live service, had already taken off.)
This change will likely lead to an exodus of these players to other platforms – although, of course, there is no guarantee that this won’t become the new norm across the board. If decades of watching Silicon Valley pull the classic bait again and again have taught us anything, it’s that nothing stays free for long.
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