Microsoft Says It’s ‘Misleading’ for FTC to Call Game Pass Experience ‘Degraded’ Now That It Costs More

Microsoft has responded to the Federal Trade Commission’s claim that the tech giant is now offering a “degraded” Game Pass experience, posing “exactly the kind of consumer harm” the FTC warned was possible before its acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

No, Microsoft responds, calling the FTC’s letter “a misleading and irrelevant account of the facts.”

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that the price of PC Game Pass has increased from $9.99, €9.99, or £7.99 per month to $11.99, €11.99, and £9.99. They also introduced a new “standard tier” of Xbox Game Pass for console players, which is cheaper but doesn’t include day-one access to new games. This is what the FTC is referring to when it talks about a degraded experience.

“It’s wrong to characterize this as a ‘downgraded’ version of the discontinued Game Pass for console offering,” Microsoft’s response letter, first filed by The Verge’s Tom Warren, states. “That discontinued product did not offer multiplayer functionality, which had to be purchased separately for an additional $9.99 per month (bringing the total cost to $20.98 per month). While Game Pass Ultimate will increase in price from $16.99 to $19.99 per month, the service will offer more value with a host of new games available on a day-and-date basis. Among them is the upcoming Call of Duty, which has never before been available on a day-and-date subscription.”

Microsoft’s letter also argues that the FTC chose not to make the subscription service a pillar of its argument in the trial, instead focusing on the possibility that Call Of Duty would be removed from competing platforms, which would harm competition. That’s not the case, Microsoft points out, because Call Of Duty “is not being denied to anyone who wants it.” The company also claims that PlayStation’s subscription service “continues to thrive, even as it adds few new games to its subscription on a day-to-day basis.”

I can’t comment legally on this public fight, but I personally believe that a higher price — or a lower price without the date and time feature that is clearly a cornerstone of Game Pass — is a degraded customer experience. That’s not offset by the fact that multiplayer is included in the lower tier because, well, I play games on PC, where access to multiplayer is generally not capped by a subscription other than the cost of your internet connection. So there’s no lower tier for Game Pass PC; it’s just more expensive than before for a fundamentally identical service. Boo, I say.