Just the other day, Microsoft made a rather ballsy and probably stupid move when it announced that Game Pass Ultimate would be getting a 50% price increase amidst other changes to the subscription. Well, it looks like people were not too chuffed, and the surge of folk trying to cancel resulted in the website facing some technical problems.
Shortly after Xbox made its announcement, Google Trends showed searches for “cancel Game Pass” spiked from around 20 points on September 30, to 90 by October 2. Then across social media, people began reporting that the page for cancelling their subscription was running slowly, crashing and failing to respond. Multiple websites corroborated the issues, also reporting they were encountering slow service, crashes and more.
It’s impossible to say with 100% certainty that the website was struggling due to the sheer volume of people – after all, I suppose it could possibly perhaps have been due to a coincidental technical problem – but the timing seems to suggest it was.
And I have to admit, I think I’m going to be joining those people. Maybe I might sub back in for a month here or there because it’s still technically cheaper than buying a new Xbox published title outright, but I won’t keep the service rolling month to month like I did previously.
We will never know exactly how much people actually cancelled, but there is some small hope that it will have enough of an effect on Microsoft for them to consider rolling back the price increase. I’m not holding my breath, though.
And what about you fine folks? If you’re currently on the Ultimate tier, are you cancelling? Perhaps you’re considering something like buying up a bunch of the gift cards that are still on sale for the original price, like Austin Evans on Youtube?
