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

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574

u/MuchBow 17h ago

"I don't mind not owning games, cloud gaming is super cheap and does not require expensive hardware" - The same idiot who now has to pay $22.99 for just 15hrs of cloud gaming.

Don't want to sound insensitive, I can understand hardware is expensive especially right now but cloud/subscription gaming is not the a good solution. A temporary solution perhaps but saving and buying your own hardware should always be the primary focus, trusting a corpo with a subscription service will always result in a bad outcome.

169

u/nik-nak333 16h ago

$22.99 for just 15hrs

And that's just the introductory rate. Next year it will be $24.99 for 15 hours, the next year $25.99 for 13 hours, and so on.

67

u/FoxyBastard 15h ago

Plus ad breaks.

1

u/stephanelevs 11h ago

oh absolutely. They'll do like those streaming services where they keep the same price for a little bit but give you the shitty version with ads and you'll have to pay more to get the same exact service you had before.

1

u/Rude_Marzipan6107 2h ago

After that, a limited carousel of shitty games that rotate out and only ultra premium subscribers pro max can access the real games people want to play. They will also introduce a gambling wheel that will determine what AAA game you can play that month for 1 hour at a time. 10 dollars per spin

6

u/Iwantmynameback PC 13h ago

I'm calling it now. They will put ads into the service to extend playtime.

3

u/iusedtohavepowers 12h ago

It’s lavish that you think Xbox will only raise the price once a year.

They’re gonna go to fucking monthly rates like gas and electric before we know it.

But people aren’t even considering the fact that it’ll be impossible to get 15hrs a month in due to rolling black outs from data centers. Guys we’re gonna be lucky to get 15hrs of time.

1

u/OptimusB 10h ago

I just got done submitting for class action lawsuit for directtv now by artificially and continually increasing rates.
I got in on the intro bundle with directtv now streaming service when it first launched. $35 for over 100 channels. It was good for first couple years then seemed like every 6 months they increased rates $5-10. Finally cancelled after it got to $80/month. I think the same package now is like $120…

1

u/tacobellrefugee 11h ago

+$10/month to unlock exclusive newly released content!

1

u/Ok_Security1721 4h ago

Don’t forget your ISP taking the opportunity to impose some data caps on you!

107

u/OverLordJezus 16h ago edited 16h ago

I said this in tv streaming/hbo sub, complaining about multiple ads playing on the screen. The reason they get away with it is because of spineless people who will pay without any forethought.

They then get defensive about it with comments like “it’s not that bad” and “just pay a few dollars extra and get no ads”. Yeah, we keep doing that and in 10 years you’ll be paying thousands a year for ad free streaming services or being interrupted every 10mins with 2 mins of ads.

33

u/ErrantWayfarer 16h ago

Gaming is one of the few places where not sailing the high seas has mostly worked out for me as a value proposition. They keep this shit up and I will return to the old days.

4

u/OverLordJezus 15h ago

This is the best thing about the gaming community, it’s incredibly connected.

5

u/zgillet 14h ago

Thank goodness many people in the gaming world are incredibly talented and intelligent (among the toxic weasels, I will acknowledge).

Breaking Denuvo, cracking bullshit DRM, repacking games without the nine other languages taking up 20 GB of space (not exaggerating).

AAA games just outright suck these days. THE ABSOLUTE BEST game I've played this year is AA. Mortal Shell 2. The runner up is indie: Retro Rewind.

3

u/justin-8 14h ago

Ever since steam launched I' pretty much stopped sailing within a few years. But yeah, this might bring it back if it weren't for steam

2

u/ErrantWayfarer 14h ago

The issue is Steam can't stop companies from using performance poisoning denuvo, or doing what For Honor just did and completely locking Linux users out of the game. I trust Steam for the most part but the publishers themselves are the ones shredding any will I have to give them money.

2

u/justin-8 12h ago

That's true. But they have also make it clear on the store page, and in many cases given refunds when games go back and remove Linux support or add extra DRM that makes it incompatible.

2

u/ThePromise110 14h ago

Exercise Lady is our savior.

1

u/ErrantWayfarer 11h ago

I haven't got there yet. The only times I've done it in the recent past were with delisted games. But I always keep my finger on the pulse just in case.

5

u/Muggsy423 16h ago

I have the plans with ads only because credit cards/internet providers pay for the lowest tier.   I'm not spending my own money.

6

u/ubelgooble 16h ago

Also there are plenty of cheap retro consoles available. My backlog wont be finished in this lifetime.

3

u/hdcase1 14h ago

You’re paying for the hardware either way, as a box under your TV or as a server pushing the game to you. Personally I’d rather have the box under the TV.

4

u/teriaavibes 16h ago

"I don't mind not owning games, cloud gaming is super cheap and does not require expensive hardware" - The same idiot who now has to pay $22.99 for just 15hrs of cloud gaming.

Yea and it was great, what is also great is that once this goes in effect, you can just unsubscribe because it is a monthly subscription with no commitment.

2

u/yacht_enthusiast 16h ago

Up until this moment, it was a good solution. Now that things have changed, expensive upfront hardware may now be the better deal.

2

u/Lamasis 14h ago

Someone did really say something like that to me.

2

u/rbrgr83 13h ago

Forever renting, never owning.

They want this for every aspect of our lives.

1

u/UltraJesus 14h ago

Cloud gaming requires a dedicated machine per active user. That is an expensive cost to recoup, because nobody really wants to pay for cloud gaming. This is how you contribute to that 36 cents per $1 spent lmao.

1

u/pyrotechnicmonkey 14h ago

isn't this the double whammy of subscribing to games as well as you need to pay for cloud hardware?

1

u/Golden-trichomes 10h ago

How is not owning a game related to cloud gaming in this scenario? Game pass isn’t a cloud gaming subscription, you can still play any of those games as much as you want by installing them. Which I imagine most people do today if less then 5% of uses pass those limits.

1

u/AdAway198 9h ago

Nah, they want people to buy video cards at inflated prices

1

u/Zeus78905 5h ago

It doesnt matter if hardware is expensive, changing the whole existing model from unlimited to per hour is absolute bullshit that shouldnt even be legal

1

u/zeanox 2h ago

The solution is just getting a pc.

0

u/MrBootylove 15h ago

On the consumer end of things I think subscription gaming is fine and is basically the modern equivalent of renting games from Blockbuster. It definitely has its own issues on the developer side of things such as how it impacts revenue, but as a consumer there's nothing wrong with paying a reduced price for temporary access to a game you might only play once and never again.

And in regards to not owning games, that is already the case even if you buy a game. With that said I do agree with your sentiment in the sense that if someone had gone all in on XCloud as their primary means of gaming (as in they don't even have proper gaming hardware and were relying on the cloud for everything), they are getting royally fucked by this change. Granted I do feel like the people who fit that description have to be a pretty small minority. Frankly I think Xbox would just be better off dropping xcloud as a service entirely.

-1

u/Admirable_Zombie5245 16h ago

This is just this service, while would I built a PC if for $20 a month I get access to a 5080 so I can play 4K/120 Ultra RTX on my OLED TV?

7

u/movzx 16h ago

You are not getting 4k/120fps over these cloud gaming services lol.

And with Game Pass, you're sometimes not even getting the PC version of the game. You wind up locked to whatever the console has. That means if the console is FPS capped, you are too.

They have a purpose, but don't mislead yourself about what you are getting.

-1

u/Admirable_Zombie5245 15h ago

It is, 4k is def 4k but I don't reach 120 because I mainly play AAA game at DLAA, Ultra RTX and 4k.

And it's PC game pass version, I can literally edit the setting as I i was on my PC (I have a 3060) which I use DLAA, 4K and all settings at ultra

Linus literally has a video, all the info you have now is from 2020, it got better: Link

1

u/LIGHTNINGBOLT23 5h ago

Streaming 4k is rarely equivalent to native 4k due to video compression. The difference is at least very obvious to me, to the point where it negates ultra settings. I don't know of a single cloud gaming service provider which does visually lossless compression; it's AV1 at best.

1

u/movzx 4h ago

Brother, you not understanding bitrate isn't my problem. Netflix will serve you "4k" content too... and then you can watch an actual Dolby Vision (or bluray disc) version and see how muddy and crap that "4k" video actually was.

Not every Game Pass game is locked to the console version, but a lot are. It doesn't matter that you have the "PC game pass". What matters is which build of the game gets put on the service. Normally it is the Xbox version because it is easier for the developer to get approvals.

ARK is a major series that used Xbox builds instead of PC builds. Deep Rock Galactic is another. Palworld and No Man's Sky are major titles that lag significantly behind the Steam builds.

Anything that falls under the "Xbox Play Anywhere" umbrella is either an Xbox build ported to PC or lags way behind what is on Steam because of the certification process it has to go through.

You generally won't notice unless you're trying to do things like play with friends who are on PC and their game version doesn't line up. Wait for a NMS update and then go try to play with a buddy who owns it on Steam. You can't.

Whether or not you care about any of this is a different matter, but there is absolutely and measurably a difference between what you stream on Game Pass (or any of the services) and what you get with the same settings running the game locally.