Why PC Game Pass is technically the worst value (and Standard is the best)

You may have seen the discourse online since the changes to the Xbox Game Pass tiers were announced earlier this year. The main theme was Microsoft attempting to ‘nickel-and-dime’ gamers by forcing people into Game Pass Ultimate with the removal of day one games from the next tier down (formerly Console Game Pass, now Game Pass Standard).

A significant subset of that audience is frustrated that PC Game Pass appears to offer the best value, with the console base already concerned at what used to be exclusive games now appearing on PC day-and-date, and increasingly on PS5. But, following our recent analysis of Game Pass tiers, we can confirm that the value disparity is not what you might think.

In fact:

• PC Game Pass gives you games for 26 cents per month each – that’s 460 games for $11.99 per month, with a total value of $9,936
• Game Pass Standard gives you games for 41 cents each OR 14 cents per month, depending on if you factor in online multiplayer to the value – it’s 362 games for $14.99 per month, with a total value of $9,301

Given online multiplayer for Xbox has been $9.99 on it’s own in the past and the overall cost of Standard is $14.99, you’re essentially paying $5.00 per month for 362 games. Now that’s not bad. Ultimate isn’t far behind, but given the outcry at Microsoft bringing in the new Standard tier, it’s interesting to see it pipping the premium version to the post (though of course Ultimate has the benefit of xCloud which isn’t available on its own to put a price on).

It’s also worth highlighting that some people will place more value on a few day one games than a quantity of older titles. Nevertheless, Standard has been positioned sensibly given what it’s lacking, and it will be interesting to see how it performs in the months to come.

Don’t forget to check out our full analysis for more from our Game Pass tier feature, including which tier has the best games by Metacritic score.

Some notes on this data: You may notice that Xbox are very vague when talking about the number of games in Game Pass tiers. Core is just “more than 20”, Ultimate is “hundreds”. In the figures above we have only counted a game once where there are multiple editions available in a particular tier EXCEPT where there is a compelling reason to treat them differently e.g. a classic version and a remaster (as an example, we have counted Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 separately, and also the Mass Effect Legendary Edition as a distinct game. In most cases, however, multiple versions have been de-duped. One other thing to note, in Ultimate where console and PC versions sometimes have their own version, we have again only counted each specific game once.