How to Avoid Xbox Game Pass Price Hike and Save £6.80 Per Month
- Xbox Game Pass Ultimate increases to £14.99 per month in September
- Deal expert Tom Church reveals how to get it for £8.19 per month
Xbox has increased the price of Xbox Game Pass. This week it sent emails to UK customers explaining that the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate would increase from £12.99 per month to £14.99.
The price increases will begin in September 2024. And whilst they have introduced a new standard tier that is cheaper at £10.99, it does not include online multiplayer, nor does it include all the day one games.
Tom Church, deal expert, has revealed how gamers can beat the price hike and save money on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Discounted Gift Cards
Tom said, "To beat Xbox Game Pass price hikes, you can buy discounted Xbox gift cards."
"Many shops sell them. Sometimes you'll find physical gift card deals at the likes of Costco and Tesco, but the best places are online."
CDKeys
"CDKeys is an online retailer that sells digital gift cards. Here you can buy one to three month passes for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate at up to 35% off."
"These are digital gift cards. Right now you can buy three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for £24.59. That's £8.19 per month, far cheaper than the new £14.99 per month subscription fee."
"Or, if you just want one month, there's that option too for £8.49. Still far cheaper."
How do you apply the digital gift card to your Xbox account?
- Buy the pass from CDKeys
- You'll get an email from CDKeys
- Within the email press 'Get Your Key' > then copy the code you're given
- Login to your Microsoft account online and redeem your code
"After you have redeemed your code it'll be added to your Microsoft account. You can see that when you head to the Services section."
"If you have a subscription already, Microsoft will use the gift card first before charging you money again when it runs out."
"However, again, if you have a subscription to Game Pass already, I recommend turning off recurring billing and just using the gift cards."
This is a great way to save money on Xbox.
Other ways to save money on Xbox Game Pass
- You can get cashback on Xbox gift cards via apps such as JamDoughnut and Cheddar.
- CDKeys also sells discounted Xbox gift cards - not specifically game pass - which can be used to purchase anything on Xbox.
- If you don't need online multiplayer, you can switch to their new Standard tier. Note - this hasn't yet been updated everywhere on Xbox's websites so you may not see this option yet.
This is why I no longer buy the latest consoles and instead concentrate on PC gaming. Online is free and Epic store and Steam are free applications and you just buy the games you want although Epic offers 1 or 2 free games a week to keep. So much cheaper on PC and so much better as you have the ability to mod games and make them a new gaming experience.
Then you have android games for portable use as well. I really don't see the point of Playstations and Xboxes nowadays.
PCs can be as cheap to as expensive as you want. From a older PC from freecycle to a £3k beast of a PC but a home made PC around £200 still offers decent performance. Maybe base it around a RX580 8GB 2048 PC card. Those are about £40-50 from aliexpress and offer about 5 teraflops of performance.
www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-rx-580-2048sp.c3321
Compact cases are only £20-30, motherboard and cpu combination perhaps 40-90 depending on what you buy and a 256GB NVME perhaps £20 and basic PSU £30, £6 cooler. Maybe £30 for 16GB of memory (2x8GB), £15 for a older 1TB hard drive.