After Gutting Game Pass, Microsoft's Next Brilliant Idea Is... cloudgaming with Ads
Just days after nuking years of goodwill by gutting Game Pass and jacking up the price, and then getting caught stealthily removing benefits, Microsoft’s next genius move has been revealed. Get ready for a free, ad-supported version of Xbox Cloud Gaming.
You can't make this up. Sources are reporting that a free tier of the streaming service is now in internal testing with Microsoft employees. This is the brilliant solution they've come up with after pricing their premium service into the stratosphere: letting the peasants play for free, but only after a healthy dose of corporate brainwashing.
Pay With Your Time, Not Your Wallet
So what does this "free" experience look like? According to the reports, it involves sitting through about two minutes of preroll ads before you can even launch a game. Once you're in, you get to play for a whopping one-hour session, with a total monthly cap of five hours. This isn't a gaming service; it's a digital waiting room with occasional interactive segments.
The library for this free tier will apparently include games you already own, eligible Free Play Days titles, and a selection of "Xbox Retro Classics." It’s a bone, and it’s been picked clean of most of its meat before being thrown our way.
The Slippery Slope Is Greased
I can see the five-year plan for this unfolding in my head right now. First, they introduce this limited, ad-supported free tier. Then, a year from now, they'll "add value" to the cheaper paid tiers by introducing "occasional, unintrusive ads." Finally, after another price hike, they'll sell the most expensive Ultimate tier on the incredible new benefit of being "ad-free."
It's a classic corporate playbook, and we're watching them run the first play. They create a problem, then sell you the solution. It's cynical, it's predictable, and it's insulting.
A Solution in Search of a Problem
The timing of this is what truly boggles the mind. Microsoft just finished telling its most dedicated customers that the service they love is now worth 50% more. After the subsequent mass exodus and website crashes, their response is to offer a severely crippled, ad-riddled version as some sort of olive branch.
This doesn't fix the core issue. They destroyed the value of their main product. This new tier feels less like a generous offering for those who can't afford the subscription and more like a way to scrape ad revenue from the very users they just priced out of the ecosystem. It's a new, creative way to monetize their own failure.
This whole saga paints a clear picture. Microsoft is desperate to squeeze every last cent out of its gaming division, even if it means alienating everyone in the process. The "best deal in gaming" is dead and buried. In its place, we have a confusing, expensive, and now ad-supported mess.