The Federal Trade Commission is looking into Xbox’s decision to raise the price of subscriptions for its existing Xbox Game Pass customers.Recently, Microsoft announced a new tier for its Xbox Game Pass called Xbox Game Pass Standard, a $15 monthly subscription for new members that excludes day-one releases, EA Play, PC Game Pass, and cloud gaming. Customers who have Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will have its price raised from $17-$20, and the company’s Xbox Game Pass Core, which only offers online play and a smaller library, is raising the cost of its yearly sub from $60 to $75 (the $10 monthly fee remains unchanged). PC Game Pass is increasing from $10 monthly to $12, GameInformer reports. Meanwhile, the company is ditching its Game Pass for Console and won’t allow new subscribers. Existing subscribers will also be permanently locked out of this tier if they fail to renew their accounts.It’s that cancelation that the FTC has issues with.According to the FTC the company is requiring customers to take on a substantial price increase, or instead accept a degraded product, noting that the Game Pass Standard does not include day-one releases.
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The FTC also noted that the move is inconsistent with Microsoft’s promises made during its acquisition of Activision last year.”Microsoft promised that ‘the acquisition would benefit consumers by making [CoD] available on Microsoft’s Game Pass on the day it is released on console (with no price increase for the service based on the acquisition).’ Microsoft’s post-merger actions thus vindicate the congressional design of preliminarily halting mergers to fully evaluate their likely competitive effects and judicial skepticism of promises inconsistent with a firm’s economic incentives.”
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