Xbox Game Pass Ultimate

Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass is a subscription service that provides access to a sizeable library of Xbox games, either for consoles or Windows PCs. For a monthly fee, you can play hundreds of titles for your platform of choice, including all Xbox Game Studios and Bethesda releases as soon as they come out. It’s an appealing service that gets even more tempting the more you’re willing to pay, with its flagship Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership providing incredible value with loads of benefits, including cloud-based game streaming on multiple devices. That's enough to earn it our Editors' Choice award for gaming streaming services.

Xbox Game Pass has multiple tiers, depending on the platform. Xbox Game Pass for Console costs $10.99 per month, while Xbox Game Pass for PC is $9.99 per month. Both plans offer access to more than 100 games on Xbox One/Xbox Series X/S or Windows. This includes all first-party Xbox Game Studios games on their release days.

Xbox Game Pass members at this tier receive various discounts to buy games via the Xbox store. The PC-specific tier also gets the same benefits as the EA Play service, which provides access to a large chunk of EA's library as part of the subscription (it otherwise costs $4.99 per month or $29.99 per year).

The highest tier, and the version we tested, is Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. For $16.99 per month, it combines both the Console and PC game passes into one, with additional features. Ultimate adds Xbox Live Gold, a separate subscription service that enables online multiplayer on Xbox consoles and itself costs $9.99 per month without the pass (or $24.99 every three months, for $100 annually). Xbox Live Gold also adds an additional two to four free games per month, in addition to what you can play on Xbox Game Pass.

Xbox Live Gold will end on September 14, but its benefits won't go away. It will be replaced by Xbox Game Pass Core, an effectively identical service to Xbox Live Gold that has online multiplayer functionality on Xbox consoles and a handful of free games. That said, it lacks the robust libraries found in the other Xbox Game Pass membership tiers. Game Pass Core subscriptions will cost $9.99 per month or $59.99 per year.

Besides combining all of those services into one monthly subscription, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate adds Microsoft’s cloud gaming feature, formerly called Project xCloud. It lets you play the service's games on your Android phone, PC, or recent Samsung TV through an app; or on an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or PC through a web page.

The $17 monthly fee is pricey compared with comparatively bare-bones services like EA Play ($29.99 per year) and Nintendo Switch Online ($19.99 per year, $49.99 per year with Expansion Pass), but it's in line with Apple One ($16.95 per month) which includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple Cloud storage. It's also a dollar less per month than PlayStation Plus Premium ($17.99), though Sony offers an annual subscription for $119.99 while Microsoft no longer has a discounted annual fee. It's a bit steep, but not exorbitant.

More than anything else, the Xbox Game Pass library will determine the value the service holds for you. It offers hundreds of games for both Xbox and Windows. There’s plenty of overlap between the platforms, but there are also some games specific to Xbox or PC. These games are regularly refreshed, with a few rotated in or out on a monthly basis.

There’s some gold in Xbox Game Pass, whether you play on console, PC, or both. All Xbox Game Studios games are up there, including Forza Horizon 5, Forza Motorsport 7, every Halo game, every Gears of War game, and Microsoft Flight Simulator. Microsoft's acquisition of Zenimax means that all of Bethesda's franchises like Doom, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Starfield are included with Xbox Game Pass, too.

There are plenty of other excellent third-party games available on top of them, though they tend not to be quite as recent as day-one Xbox Game Studios games. With EA Play included, you can play Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (though not Jedi Survivor), and all of the Dead Space games (though not the Dead Space remake). Curiously, Capcom and Sega seem at least as generous as EA with the games they offer on Xbox Game Pass, with Exoprimal, Monster Hunter Rise, Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, Persona 5 Royal, and every main series Yakuza game. Other series, like the Mega Man Legacy Collections, Resident Evil, and Square Enix's Final Fantasy games have been available on the service in the past, though aren't currently part of the library.

To play any of these games, all you have to do is load the Xbox app in Windows or access the Xbox Game Pass section on your Xbox, choose a game in the pass, and start downloading (or streaming, which I’ll get to later).

Microsoft’s cloud gaming service was previously called Project xCloud, and was available through a separate app. The service is now simply called Xbox Cloud Gaming, and it's available as part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, despite still being in beta. It lets you play any game available through Xbox Game Pass on your phone through game streaming. The games run on Microsoft’s own servers, with all graphics, sound, and inputs streaming to and from those servers to your phone. Cloud Gaming is accessible through the Xbox Game Pass app on Android phones, Samsung TVs made after 2021, and Windows. It can also be played in a web browser, making it usable on iPad, iPhones, and Macs. On iOS and iPadOS, the relevant web page helpfully gives instructions on saving that page as an icon to your device's home screen, which makes it behave exactly like the app does on Android.

To play Xbox games on your phone, you need a compatible controller. You can simply pair an Xbox Wireless Controller to your phone over Bluetooth, or use a variety of gamepads designed specifically for Xbox cloud gaming, like the Backbone, PowerA Moga XP5-X Plus, and Razer Kishi. The cloud-gaming-specific controllers often have some form of phone holder or clamp that keeps your phone in place at a comfortable viewing position on the gamepad, letting you use the pair of devices like a gaming handheld (the Razer Kishi with its internal phone holder feels particularly like a Nintendo Switch, especially the Razer Edge tablet with its upgraded Kishi V2 Pro).

Most importantly, you need a very fast Internet connection. Microsoft recommends a 5GHz Wi-Fi connection or an LTE/5G mobile connection capable of at least 10Mbps downstream. Decent upstream speed will also help keep your inputs feeling responsive, and as always the faster the connection, the better. Unless you have mmWave 5G and are in an amazing location, 5GHz Wi-Fi will probably be your best bet.

I played some games through Xbox Game Pass on my iPhone 12, with a Backbone controller. I connected to my home cable network over 5GHz Wi-Fi, which showed consistent speeds of 740Mbps down and 38Mbps up.

Hollow Knight and Guilty Gear Strive both played surprisingly well on the service. The gameplay was responsive enough to perform precise platforming in Hollow Knight, and I could string together a few decent combos in Guilty Gear. Neither game felt laggy or unresponsive, though fighting game enthusiasts who count individual frames will probably find the streaming just a hair too slow for their tastes. If your network connection is consistent, you can get a very good experience from this.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that cloud saving tracks across both cloud gaming and your progress on Xbox and PC. Hollow Knight, Forza Horizon 4, Forza Horizon 5, and every other game that supports cloud saves I tried seamlessly tracking those saves between my local console and PC and the streaming service. It's the same consistency PlayStation Plus offers with its cloud saves, and doesn't have massive holes in the games that support it like Nintendo Switch Online does.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is one of the best deals in gaming, as it offers a fantastic game library, including all major Microsoft releases on launch day, and multiple other benefits. Its $17 monthly fee is a bit steep, but it includes titles for both Xbox and PC, an Xbox Live Gold membership (itself a $100 annual value), and access to Microsoft’s cloud gaming service, further expanding where you can play these games. Even if you only play on Xbox hardware, you’ll need Xbox Live Gold at a minimum for online play. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate doubles the price, but adds more than double the value in the games you can play and how you can play them, and that earns it our Editors' Choice award.