Summary
GameStop will keep selling Xbox Game Pass Ultimate prepaid cards for $19.99 despite Microsoft’s $30 price.
GameStop says $19.99 Ultimate cards are deliberate, not an error – available in-store and online.
This could spark a clash with Microsoft; meanwhile, snag cheap Ultimate subs – 600+ sold in 24 hours.
If you haven’t heard yet, Microsoft recently increased the price of its Ultimate tier to $30 a month, which was a 50% increase over its previous $20 price tag. People quickly discovered that you could still purchase prepaid cards that could be redeemed for an Ultimate subscription for $20.
It felt like a loophole, or perhaps even an error on the seller’s part. Surely, once the stores clocked that Microsoft had upped the price for Ultimate to $30 a month, they would follow suit and increase their own prices? Well, it turns out that some of them already knew; they just didn’t want to do anything about it. GameStop has just announced that its $20 Ultimate prepaid cards are not a pricing error; it’s deliberate.
GameStop takes a stand against Microsoft’s Game Pass Ultimate price hike
As spotted by GamesRadar, GameStop published a post on X making its stance very clear. If you see a Game Pass Ultimate card sold by the company for $20, that’s neither a pricing error nor negligence; that’s what it’s meant to be sold at. At least, that’s what GameStop believes, and I’ll be hard-pressed to find any consumer who disagrees with them. As per the X post, it seems you can pick one up either in-store or online for its old price.
So, what does this mean now? I’ve never owned a game store before, so I’m not familiar with how much retailers purchase game cards at. All I’m sure about is that the business will purchase the cards for less than the amount written on the card, which allows them to turn a profit when someone buys it for face value. If GameStop purchases these cards for less than $20 a pop, then it can still pull a profit by standing its ground and selling them for $10 less.
However, there’s also the case of Microsoft, which will likely be displeased that GameStop will siphon sales away from it. Can Microsoft make a case for stopping sales to GameStop? Is it allowed to increase the price for its Ultimate cards so that GameStop makes a loss for each purchase? Again, I have no idea about this side of retail. All I know is that I’m ready to see the sparks fly between these two companies to see which one wins.