Xbox Game Pass May Let Subscribers Build Their Own Plan
Microsoft is reportedly planning to let Xbox Game Pass subscribers build their own plan by choosing which features they pay for, rather than selecting one of the preset tiers. Engadget published the report on October 24, 2026.
Game Pass is Microsoft's subscription service, which gives players access to a rotating library of games for a monthly fee. Today a subscriber picks one of a few bundled tiers, so the choice is all or nothing within each tier.
The idea has been circulating for months. Engadget credits Windows Central with reporting in April that Xbox hoped to offer a more flexible Game Pass, in which users could decide which packages of content to include in their plan. Operation Sports, citing Windows Central, said Microsoft's long-term plans for Game Pass could include a 'pick your own plan' feature. Engadget also credits Fortune's October 2026 profile of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma with reporting that Xbox planned to let users pick the features they wanted in their subscription.
Engadget describes the reported model as one that could let subscribers drop bundled subscriptions such as Fortnite Crew. Dropping a bundled add-on would lower the price of Game Pass for people who do not want it.
On current pricing, Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass page states that plans start at $9.99 per month. The top tier is considerably higher. Reuters reported in October 2025 that Microsoft had raised Game Pass Ultimate to $29.99 per month, $10 above the earlier price, and described the change as a 50% increase to its top subscription tier.
Smaller, usage-based options have also surfaced. The Verge reported in April on a leak revealing an Xbox Game Pass 'Starter Edition' bundle, which it said includes access to more than 50 games from the Game Pass library and 10 hours per month of Xbox Cloud Gaming, the service that streams games from Microsoft's servers to your device. In October, The Verge reported that pay-as-you-go cloud bundles start at $3.99 for 10 hours of cloud playtime, and that cloud hours include ad-free play and shorter wait times.
Xbox's own terms note that Game Pass titles, their number, features, and availability vary over time, by region, by Game Pass plan, and by platform. That matters for any model built on selecting features, because the catalogue behind each selection is not fixed.
In my view, the central question for a per-feature plan is pricing. Game Pass Ultimate has carried Perks, which The Verge reported in 2020 added in-game extras such as unique emotes and cosmetics. Those items are easy to bundle and harder to unbundle without a clear price for each one. The reported Fortnite Crew example suggests that third-party subscriptions could also be treated as separate components.
The broader context here is that Microsoft has spent the past year raising the price of its top tier while adding lower-cost entry points. A modular structure would let one catalogue serve a player who wants only cloud hours, a player who wants only the library, and a player who wants everything. For subscribers who pay for components they never use, that flexibility could be the most useful change in the reported plan. For Microsoft, it would turn a handful of tiers into a pricing matrix. The reports so far describe the idea without a launch date or a published price for the individual components.
