XBOX Cloud Gaming pricing has been rumoured to jump, and Microsoft hasn’t disappointed with the reveal: the XBOX Cloud now charges by the hour.
The XBOX brand and XBOX CEO Asha Sharma continue to make significant changes as part of the brand’s ongoing reset. As of this post, nearly 2,000 employees have been made redundant since Sharma announced the reset, and three more rounds of layoffs are expected between October and January in 2027. As part of these ongoing changes, it has been rumoured that XBOX Cloud Gaming would receive a notable uptick in price before the release of GTA VI, and XBOX has delivered.
Today, they announced a new pay structure for XBOX Cloud Gaming, and although the service used to be free to use at your discretion with an XBOX Game Pass Ultimate subscription, with the change, the subscription now comes with 15 hours PER MONTH. The new XBOX Game Pass price structure can be seen below, as announced last month.
Where XBOX Cloud Gaming is concerned as a standalone product, XBOX will allow players to get Cloud Gaming access separately from the Game Pass service, and it will run on prepaid rates. These prepaid rates will be per hour, meaning fans will pay a premium up front for an allotment of hours on the service. This also means fans will have a limit on how much they can use the service. The maximum number of hours a person will be able to play on XBOX Cloud Gaming is 50. An XBOX spokesperson said the reasoning for this was, “Moving to monthly limits allows us to keep offering the service while continuing to invest in its reliability and performance. We understand that for some players the practical result is a higher cost.”
The new price model announced by XBOX Cloud Gaming and its introductory pricing (called Cloud playtime packs) is as follows: players will be given 10hrs of playtime for $3.99, 25hrs for $7.99, or 50hrs for $11.99, with no current notion that players will be able to pay for more a month. XBOX notes, “Cloud playtime packs provide an ad-free cloud gaming experience, including shorter wait times, high-quality streaming, and playtime that remains available until it’s used.” This implies XBOX may deploy a Cloud tier WITH ads, but fans can bank hours they’ve paid for and use them later on.
Although the new XBOX Cloud Gaming price structure is surprising, XBOX has said the new prices won’t go into effect until November 2026 for all users, so players with an XBOX Game Pass Ultimate membership can still use the Cloud service at no extra charge until then.
