One week before Starfield, Microsoft quietly kills the $1 Xbox Game Pass deal again
Microsoft really wants you to pay more than $1 for Starfield
Microsoft has killed the $1 Xbox Game Pass deal once again, this time just over a week before the launch of Starfield - arguably the biggest-ever day one Game Pass release.
Over the weekend, Xbox players began to notice that Xbox no longer offers new Game Pass subscribers the option to get the service for $1. The timing of this move with Starfield's launch is conspicuous, especially given that the $1 deal was shortened from a full month to just 14 days earlier in the month of August.
For years, new subscribers were able to get their first month of Xbox Game Pass for just $1, but this deal has been sent to and brought back from the grave at least once before. The $1 deal previously ended back in March, with Microsoft saying at the time that it was "evaluating different marketing promotions for new members in the future." The $1 deal then returned in July, just as Xbox Game Pass got a worldwide price hike.
It remains to be seen if the deal will return once again after the shine has worn off of Starfield a bit, but for now it looks like you'll need to pay either $10 for PC Game Pass, $11 for console Game Pass, or $17 for the all-in-one Game Pass Ultimate if you want to play the RPG through a subscription. Of course, you do still have the option of paying $70 once and keeping the game until the internet melts down.
You can always pay even more money if you want to get into Starfield Early Access.
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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.