r/gaming • u/Force_Hammer • 17h ago

Microsoft to impose time limits on Xbox cloud gaming subscribers as costs continue to climb

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/03/microsoft-xbox-game-pass-cloud-limits.html
11.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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4.5k

u/Kabirdb 17h ago

"Players will be able to pay for additional hours beyond the caps"

So basically the standard fuck you, give me money.

1.1k

u/Strikereleven 16h ago

They're going back to that 1999 AOL model

257

u/Canadyans 16h ago

Oh god you just gave me dialup flashbacks. Damn you. And you’re right.

51

u/HastilyThrownObject 15h ago

“Get off the internet, I need to use the phone!”

6

u/justagoddamnperson 13h ago

But my hour isn’t up yet, my brother got the full hour and I had to wait!!!

2

u/HastilyThrownObject 13h ago

Holy shit the memories you unlocked. My older brother always stole my hour on the computer and used it to try and look up porn. It was pretty much only images you could look at and they took like 20 mins to load each picture. Then I’d get in trouble for all his porn lookups. Really hard to explain to my parents that it obviously was him because I knew how to clear history and I looked at different porn than him

2

u/justagoddamnperson 12h ago

LMAO. Oh god. See my siblings and I were younger and not looking at porn in the dial-up days. I can imagine something like this happening if we were older though 😭

I did get accused of messing up a laptop with porn once but it literally was some chain/spam Myspace message where I clicked the link which gave it viruses, some of which showed porn. My dad was sure I had to be looking at porn in the first place to get that but I wasn’t 😭

2

u/HastilyThrownObject 12h ago

Yeah I was like 14 and my brother was 15 in 98 when we got our Gateway PC and a ton of AOL discs

My usage was 25% porn and 75% downloading and printing DBZ pictures with some Gamepro chat room time thrown in occasionally. I had a buddy that stole some XXX VHS tapes from his dad and gave them to me so I tried to stick to analog self satisfaction as much as I could.

My dad was more mad about me using all the ink printing out pics of Dragonball then he was about the porn.

2

u/justagoddamnperson 12h ago

Lol, this makes me feel so innocent in comparison. All I was doing was talking to people from school. I still remember how mind-blowing it was when we finally got broadband and you could just have internet all the time and not have to fight over it or take down the phone line. Shit was crazy

1

u/HastilyThrownObject 11h ago

Oh I loved that time frame when we finally got high speed. I was a sophmore and only me and my buddy down the street were the only people with broadband in the neighborhood for like 6 months so download speeds were so fast. My dad also got a new computer with a CD writer on it. I learned my neighbor hood buddy with broadband also had a CDR as well so me and him went around our school taking playlist requests and would then go home and download songs off Napster and then rip playlists and sell them the next day, sharing the profits. Sold CDs for $8 a piece for a mix or $11 for an artists album(it was tougher to get an entire album of Napster than just popular songs)

We seriously made like $700 in a few weeks. About halfway through that school year, 4 other kids got high speed and CD burners too and most people stopped buying CDs from any of us

1

u/BloodPharts88 9h ago

And then there was me...who was looking up dbz porn as a youngin' in the late 90s lmao

3

u/addamee 15h ago

Same. I played an air combat sim back in the day and it was free (provided you had an AOL subscription). The day they began charging for the game as well felt like a slow knife in my young heart

3

u/rbrgr83 14h ago

Can I offer you a free coaster in these trying times? 💿

1

u/Frequent_Opportunist 11h ago

I miss getting the diskettes in the mail.

1

u/GrassyDaytime 10h ago

Yeah, also takes me back to the earliest forms of non-contract pre-paid cell phones. shudders

They were like... 1$ a minute or something? Lmfao

1

u/AngriestInchworm 24m ago

The SpongeBob millennials made that into music.

-2

u/almostoy PC 16h ago

I had an actual local ISP at that time. I walked into their office and handed them cash. Then, we'd tie an onion to our belts and yell at clouds. T'ain't got no right, bein' cloudy as they are, clouds....

2

u/justagoddamnperson 13h ago

As was the style at the time

1

u/almostoy PC 8h ago

Yes. I actually did pay my ISP in cash. They were that local. Dial up.

54

u/1337b337 16h ago

Just swing by WalMart and grab another free 100 Hours Of America Online disc they keep by the checkouts.

3

u/Gregus1032 13h ago

I remember going to Burger King, grabbing the whole box they had on display and then my friends and I playing tag with them by throwing them at each other.

It was dumb.

Fun but dumb.

3

u/REDuxPANDAgain 12h ago

We microwaved them. My friends parents were pissed lol

1

u/Kills_Alone PC 11h ago

We did that as well, boxes and boxes, thousands of them from Blockbuster, except ours were covered in LSD, basically the same thing though.

1

u/Shadowrak 4h ago

I knew kids who would huck them at trains from an overpass

2

u/JonZ82 11h ago

But you COULD play neverwinter.. which was awesome at the time.

27

u/Driftysilver 16h ago

Oh boy, I remember that. We got the disc that you had to insert to get online. You would pay for your internet service the way we used to pay for phone minutes/texting. Like you bought time and then used it, just like this!!! Holy fuck man, dont give xfinity any ideas...

1

u/XxsteakiixX 13h ago

Remeber when the internet was going to be like cable where only certain websites were accessed if u payed more EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

4

u/Heiferoni 14h ago

Holy shit this is exactly how early cell phone plans were.

"Only pay for the minutes you use!"

Please let's fucking nip this in the bud right now.

2

u/Actual__Wizard 14h ago

Yeah I was going to say: We've regressed all the way back to AOL days. People are going to have to pay hourly to play video games online?

3

u/EditEd2x 16h ago

If we’re lucky they go back to 99 phone plans that offered free nights and weekends at this point.

1

u/Tipist 16h ago

They better mail me some free coasters CDs then like AOL did!

1

u/_Ocean_Machine_ 14h ago

They also flew pretty well if you threw them like a frisbee

1

u/MooseMan7 15h ago

Well at least that means they’ll be keeping disc drives

2

u/nox66 15h ago

You have more faith than I

1

u/omgitsjagen 15h ago

Gemstone III (then Gemstone IV) cost me A LOT of yard mowings back in the day.

1

u/dj92wa 14h ago

They’re putting codes in cereal boxes?! We probably had a thousand years of internet saved up from all of those cereal boxes CDs lol

1

u/24_August_1814 13h ago

Heh now that you mention it, I think our plan was limited to 15 hours a month of real Internet outside AOL's walled garden.

Of course, mom and dad hated having the phone line tied up so much that we never came anywhere near that...

1

u/Illumynarty_234 13h ago

So then you're saying this will eventually cycle back around to a better alternative that's more cost friendly, right?

... Right?

1

u/DJIcEIcE 12h ago

NetZero with 500 hours top up per month. Free dial up forever!

1

u/JACC_Opi 12h ago

Don't remind me!😩

1

u/tomkatt 11h ago

No, they’re limiting access, not giving away 5 months free to prevent cancellation.

1

u/Aggravating-Face2073 7h ago

MUDs! Multi-undergrad Destroyer!

Young college kids paying $30 to send a digital arrow from Kentucky to Utah & the attack missed! Darn! Oh and servers are only open during daylight hours!

1

u/ThanatosIdle 2h ago

No, with AOL I got 1000 free hours. That is 16 years of time from Microsoft's basic plan

1

u/synthdrunk 1h ago

By then AOL was unlimited, roll back a few.
In the halcyon days of ma bell style billing dial-in services had—
Monthly fee
Per-minute connect charge. Peak and off-peak rates. Individual doors(/features/games) could have additional charges! Istr both popular multiplayer games and (early on) the chat both having additional charges involved.
People think they’re getting fucked and, while they are, Money remembers going a LOT deeper and has well-positioned itself to go back to thrustin.’

264

u/MrKoch2003 16h ago

15 hours a month on the highest tier is 30 minutes a day. You'll hit the cap before you even finish character creation in an RPG.

93

u/_Ocean_Machine_ 14h ago

If you only game on weekends, that's less than four hours per weekend.

I imagine most of us in here can knock that out before Friday night is over.

62

u/b0w3n 14h ago

My comment when someone mentioned 15 hours was literally "ah yes, a saturday"

6

u/EstablishmentCivil29 13h ago

No shit right?

-9

u/Zalvren 13h ago

To be fair, I don't think cloud gaming is used by anyone that is at that level of gaming. It's basically for people that almost don't game at all (and so don't see the need in having a local machine)

13

u/Njoybeing 13h ago

It is. It's used by people like me who are living on a very low, fixed income, who don't have any way to purchase high end hardware.

0

u/Strong-Finish5346 9h ago

don't have any way to purchase high end hardware.

If you were putting that $26/mo into a savings account, instead of setting it on fire by giving it to game pass, you'd be able to buy a new PC roughly every 4 years. It would require self-discipline and delaying your gratification though.

4

u/Used-Persimmon-367 13h ago

Cloud gaming is the only way I can play my owned copy of Cyberpunk.

3

u/No-Education3638 13h ago

Beg to differ

3

u/EstablishmentCivil29 13h ago

That is incorrect

8

u/Front_Dragonfruit324 11h ago

Ill literally quit gaming . It's just a money grab now. PlayStation, xbox all as bad as each other. I only use cloud gaming on my phone. As I can't justify buying the most recent consoles... life's to fkn expensive. Kids , bills, subscriptions, now having to pay to stream games you own , these companies need to cut the crap and stop fleecing us . Ill be back to Sega mega drive and snes at this rate 

3

u/DocileBanalBovlne 14h ago

That's not even enough time to choose which facial scar I like best

2

u/MrScottyBear 14h ago

Man. I thought Geforce doing a 100 hour limit was bad...

6

u/jbaker8935 14h ago

even a casual player working on a new game. couple checkpoints a night will blow that limit in a week. not great, but i suppose they got to do it.

9

u/SinkPhaze 14h ago

As a casual gamer whos primary hobby is NOT gaming and mostly plays relatively short puzzle games, short walking sims, and the odd session with friends. 15 a week might be a bit more than I need usually but 15 a month is fucking laughable. I'd hit that every month

If this limit would really only effect 4% of their customers (per the article) then their customers aren't using their service

3

u/Maniactver 13h ago

Its 4% of Game Pass subscribers, so yeah, probably 96% of game pass users just don't use cloud gaming at all.

2

u/Frequent_Opportunist 11h ago

I imagine most of their customers are paying for it and not using it. I paid for it for 2 years and didn't use any of the cloud gaming.

1

u/mucho-gusto 10h ago

It was ass for me so yeah I avoided it

2

u/drewcareymoore 13h ago

I understand there’s some people who will leave it on all day and there’s gotta be some kinda reasonable limit, but 15 hours on the top plan is low.

If they raise it to 50 on Ultimate and keep the other plan caps as is, they can probably win some people back, but man, 15 is so stingy.

1

u/Njoybeing 10h ago

You see 50 hours as a reasonable limit? How did you get that number? I see 50 as stingy enough to be a deal breaker and 15 isn't even worth discussing.

2

u/ACoderGirl 10h ago

Lol wow, is that seriously it??

I was gonna make some comment partially defending them (along the lines of "subscriptions are meant to reflect costs of buying a console now, not however many years ago"), but 15 hours a month is utterly pathetic.

Is there actually a serious target audience? Because that number is so low that it makes me think they're purposefully trying to get rid of the service. Like they wanted to turn it down but figured it'd be better to just set some hilariously high price instead. Like you'd do if your toxic former job wanted you to put in some contractor hours after you quit.

1

u/DisastrousAcshin 6h ago

I'm the early isp days you paid extra for more hours once you hit your limit. I'm sure companies would love to get back to that

1

u/dusters 10h ago

Who is spending 15 hours in character creation?

1

u/Major_Higgins 9h ago

30 minutes a day is preposterous!

1

u/TheRetardedGoat 50m ago

Conspiracy whereby they know the AI prices are fucking consumer PCs stopping people buying them and consoles and shifting to subscription services

-14

u/jon_targareyan 15h ago

I think the limit is per day. 15 hours per month would be an abysmal cap

4

u/Dearic75 15h ago edited 14h ago

Google search is insisting it will be 15 hours per month.

Also, that’s at the highest tier. The cheaper tiers are 10 hours per month and 5 hours per month.

7

u/nox66 14h ago

It's not, it's per month according to the official blog post.

6

u/jon_targareyan 14h ago

That’s unreal

127

u/Nomoreargument 16h ago

Why cant WE all say FUCK YOU, we are not gonna give you any money? I’m sure if 75% of us did that they’d get down on their knees and beg to have us back.

Why do we keep funding these greedy fucking bastards?

94

u/bl4ckhunter 15h ago

No one's going to pay for this, this is just them downscaling the service so there's less people pissed off when they outright shut it down later down the track because they've rediscovered for the seventh or eighth time that cloud gaming is never going to be economically viable because servers are too expensive to run compared to user devices.

5

u/SelloutRealBig 15h ago

The average person doesn't have those critical thinking abilities. All they want is quick dopamine hits and to complain about the cost of living that they enable.

3

u/Kevmeister_B 15h ago

Because people don't want to say the fuck you. Plain and simple.

3

u/duosx 14h ago

Cause we can’t fucking help ourselves apparently.

3

u/Njoybeing 13h ago

This is the biggest and most important question and it's maddening how so many people ignore it. Or believe the bs that we are powerless against big corps. People have so much more power than we realize- if we would just stand together.

2

u/Galinhooo 15h ago

Being real, it seems to affect a really small percentage of costumers so they probably assumed it is fine. The issue is that this cuts out a lot of the potential costumers (that probably would never join in any close future anyway)

2

u/Clueless_Otter 9h ago

You can. But they aren't going to "get on their knees and beg to have you back." If the service is unprofitable for them to offer, then they simply won't offer that service anymore. For example, no one subscribed to Google Stadia and they shut it down.

5

u/Ryan_e3p 16h ago

How else are people going to play the latest annual Call of Space Marine Future Warrior Duty schlock?

2

u/Secret-Teaching-3549 14h ago

Because gamers are addicts that will never stop giving money to their dealers.

1

u/Sad-Sun-8446 11h ago

But if the dealer isn't providing the games, even the addicts are gonna notice.

2

u/Secret-Teaching-3549 9h ago

They are providing the games, they're just charging more for them. And the brainless video game addicts will continue to pay them.

2

u/lupin43 16h ago

Because when people try to do that, you get incredible pushback and shouted down (by some bots presumably, but also rude people) in attempts to try to delegitimize and soften the dissent. It really should be easier than ever to organize now, but there are also new/convenient barriers to that goal as well.

The “discussions” about physical versions of games is a good ongoing example of this

2

u/DrunkenTrom 15h ago

I concur. I'm still buying physical copies of new console games while they exist. I still buy digital on Steam since they've never removed any of my purchases since I created my account back in 2005. I also recently picked up an Analogue 3D and have been buying N64 games off of eBay (as well as physical copies of ROM hacks and unreleased prototypes (Shotgun Mario 64, Dinosaur Planet) as well as homebrew (Junk Runner 64) off of Aliexpress). Lastly I preordered the anniversary edition of the Neo Geo AES+ along with 4-5 games.

I won't pay for streaming/cloud services, and if Sony/M$ go all digital then I'll just keep upgrading and playing on my PC. My only movie streaming service is Amazon and I only really have that for the shipping. I canceled Netflix over six years ago and haven't looked back as I mostly buy 4K Blu-Ray discs as the picture quality and sound is better than streaming anyway (I also rip them for my Plex server to stream within my home, and to select family members outside my home).

1

u/MagnusBrickson 12h ago

I haven't bought an Xbox game in years at this point. Close to a decade since I payed for Xbox live

1

u/RamboMcMutNutts 12h ago

I've been saying FUCK YOU for a while now. I was born in 1980 so have live through gaming's golden years, and what we have now is an absolute travesty compared to what it used to be.

1

u/blueberrycauzez 11h ago

I’m sure if 75% of us did that they’d get down on their knees and beg to have us back.

Whale economy means you make the game bad on purpose for the 1% of people generating 99% of revenue.

1

u/onexamongthefence 11h ago

At this point I'm pretty sure they could just charge the subscription fee without providing access to literally anything and while people would bitch, they'd still pay it.

1

u/mistcrawler 9h ago

This isn't about winning - I doubt they're expecting that.

This is about them giving in eventually because of 'listening to customer feedback, meeting you halfway with a more 'lenient' limitation per month', the community rejoices, and Microsoft now can stand on solid (more profitable) ground for a while before making the next change.

Basically, the popular corporation playbook whenever they want to implement anything unpopular.

2

u/KitaharaKazusa1 6h ago

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the entire cloud gaming model made no sense with modern hardware costs and the choice was either this or shutting it down completely. Which will probably happen anyway because these prices look pretty terrible

1

u/MattieShoes 8h ago

"We" are never going to act in concert. If it's unacceptable to you, then do that. If you're alone, oh well.

1

u/EducationalCrab5998 5h ago

I cancelled game pass when they price hiked it and added tiers, reading there’s limits now makes me glad I did.

I will never, ever support Xbox ever again.

1

u/Merusk 15h ago

People need their bread & circuses or else they'd have to pay attention to the hellscape around them.

79

u/Wolfgar26 16h ago

Nshitia paved the way for others to pull the same move.

GeForce Now went from unlimited playtime to 100h and people got pissed, Microslop proves once more they can always be more greedy than others by maxing out at 15h

56

u/stache1313 16h ago

100 hours a month is at least somewhat reasonable. That's an average of 3 hours and 20 minutes a day.

16

u/OverlySexualPenguin 16h ago

that is UNREASONABLE!

16

u/TheBugThatsSnug 16h ago

If this is an unreasonable amount of time to stream a game with only a controller and screen, no other hardware, basically, then you probably should get some hardware to play longer without streaming.

-3

u/GaryOster 13h ago

Did... did you just assume this guy's budget?

3

u/TheBugThatsSnug 13h ago

Its enough budget to subscribe to a service where you wait in line to play a game for a set amount of hours. Its like renting your tv or computer, youd save more time and money just getting your own.

4

u/stache1313 15h ago

This is just cloud gaming. If you spend that much time gaming you probably have other ways of gaming.

-9

u/Admirable_Zombie5245 16h ago

It’s more than fine? Gaming is my favorite hobby and I’d probably play at max 3 hours a day during vacations and in satisfied

8

u/Im_Unsure_For_Sure 15h ago

Not sure what your personal criteria for satisfaction has to do with anything.

-1

u/Delann 15h ago

Bro, that's 1/6 of the fucking day every day. Assuming you sleep at least 6 hours and work at least another 6, you'd literally need to spend a third of all your free time gaming. And thats me being generous, most people would at least work 8 hours. Plus you still gotta eat, wash, probably commute, etc. If you have that kind of time you're either unemployed or are cutting corners somewhere else, either way, that's a lot of time.

3

u/Im_Unsure_For_Sure 14h ago

Imma bout to blow your fuckin mind brother - weekends exist.

-13

u/chop5397 15h ago

Anything more than 3 hours a day is an addiction.

7

u/stache1313 15h ago

Also this is an average. If you play an hour a day during the week and 8 hours each day on the weekend that is an average of 3 hours a day.

2

u/Ch33s3m4st3r 15h ago

Or you know a lot of free time?

-1

u/Delann 15h ago edited 14h ago

It's 1/6 of the day, EVERY day. At that point you're either unemployed, slacking off or not sleeping enough. Not saying 15 hours a month isnt low but come on.

2

u/Ch33s3m4st3r 13h ago

Before I had kids it was not unusual to have freetime around 7pm to 11pm. Workday ended 3-4pm, chores, training, food and then whatever I wanted. On weekends even more freetime.

But these days I do agree with you that 100hr/month is plenty. I just also understand how someone can dedicate that time to gaming without sacrificing other areas of life nor would I call it an addiction. Just different priorities.

2

u/nox66 15h ago

If you get a game you really like and have a lot of free time, you might spend 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday playing it. Four weekends a month, and you've already basically hit the limit.

3

u/murticusyurt 12h ago

and people got pissed

Some did. There were way too many weirdos telling us it was a good thing and if you needed more there was something wrong with you and your entire life. I am not being melodramatic.

1

u/Zalvren 13h ago

There is a huge difference between 100 hours and 15 hours (85 hours lol).

If you game more than 100 hours a month to be honest, you're at the level where cloud gaming doesn't make sense and you should have your local hardware. That's quite a lot

8

u/interesseret 16h ago

Just shutting it down would probably have been cheaper than trying to keep it alive like this.

1

u/doublah 12h ago

But that way they can't say it's an extra benefit to Game Pass subscriptions.

1

u/QF_Dan 16h ago

So it's literally mobile data quota topup, what a joke

1

u/BillyBean11111 16h ago

10 cents a text message coming back in 2030

1

u/LackLickLuck_y 16h ago

Welcome to The Arcades 1984 Edition

1

u/fooey 15h ago

They've realized the growth phase of gaming is over, so they're shifting to profit extraction.

Expect the entire industry to pivot to whale hunting, and if you're not a consumer feeding them a constant drip of cash they'd rather you go away.

1

u/chasingit1 15h ago

Alternatively, what if we could, like, ya know- own our games outright via some form of “physical copy” to where there is no need to stream and to where some sort of “digital license” could not be removed at any given time?!…

This is especially true of single player/story driven games

1

u/SgtElectroSketch 15h ago

Dude it feels like every fucking publisher and platform are making the most anti-consumer decisions possible. Low-key we need another video game market crash so games can go back to being made by people who care.

1

u/ButWhatIfPotato 15h ago

Bob Boblaw representing microsoft in court: Why should my client provide the services they are paid to do so?

1

u/DJ_Advogato 15h ago

A bajillion years ago, I worked for GameStorm, which was an online gaming company in the 90s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameStorm

You paid a 15 dollar sub, and then also paid per hour for most games. ALso, you had to pay your ISP (usually per hour).

Everything old is new again!

1

u/Turkino 15h ago

Remember back when you actually owned your games, had the cart in your hand, and you could play all day, all weekend long?

<Me in 5 years at this rate>

1

u/Karekter_Nem 15h ago

Are the corporate defenders saying “people who hate this are poor” here yet? They sure do pride themselves on how much money they give to corporations.

1

u/metallica65 15h ago

Enshittification

1

u/snowflake37wao 14h ago

So basically the standard fuck you, give me money.

No, that was the old standard. The new standard is fuck you, give me money, and fuck you, give me more money.

1

u/emorcen 14h ago

I wonder if they've tried charging people for NOT using their service? You can have this idea for free Microsoft execs

1

u/streezus 14h ago

It's ok, 'cause they go on to say they understand this just means that people who actually like the service will functionally just be paying more to use it. Like they aren't sorry, but they at least understand ...

1

u/Fach-All-Religions 14h ago

fuck this language. they wont "be able yo pay" ffs they're not doing them a fucking favor. they want to limit so they cash in more money and word it as a oh look we found a solution to the problem you can simply pay here look that's what you wanted right

1

u/DepressoEspresso55 14h ago

We really brought back the same system cell phones had with fixed talk plans.. think we gonna have a roll over feature.. or maybe free gaming minutes after 9pm and on weekends?!!

1

u/thecman25 14h ago

The Microsoft way

1

u/therealultraddtd 13h ago

This is why they’re not stressed about us not being able to afford the next generation of consoles. They’ve already figured in how much they’ll gouge us for streaming.

And mark my words, we’re going to see more ISPs start metering on top of that.

1

u/Dr_WLIN 12h ago

"please scan verification can"

1

u/Starfall0 10h ago

Pay us the same amount as before for less and if you want what you had before? Pay us more. What's that? Tariff refunds? All of that money has already been spent by our janitor who's been running over his open ai token limit for days now. So no you can't have it, now give us more money.

1

u/The_Sabretooth 10h ago

Just wait till the pc part market is ruined enough for this to be the more viable choice and then we're screwed.

1

u/ChronoLink99 Console 10h ago

Like any megacorp. No one should be surprised.

1

u/Jerthy 10h ago

They accidentally leaked phase 2 too early, this was supposed to release when most players are priced out of real hardware by AI.

-4

u/vitriolholic 16h ago

There is a cost associated with hosting entire games on a cloud that you can access and play. They’ve been operating this portion of the business likely at a loss and have to correct that. It’s pretty standard business practice in the world of SaaS and this isn’t any different.

I’ve also never played or met someone who played “cloud” versions of any game. Buy the fucking game if you want to complain about dollar value lol

3

u/The_Bygone_King 16h ago

It sounds like the service shouldn't exist if they have to default to these awful systems.