Xbox Kept At Least One Big Promise In Its Most Tumultuous Year Ever

When it drastically increased the price of Game Pass Ultimate on October 1, 2025, Xbox made a promise in a now-deleted Xbox Wire post: “Ultimate subscribers now get access to over 75 day-one releases a year.” In the year since, a lot has changed at Xbox. It has hired a new CEO, laid off thousands of developers, spun off several studios, and scaled back its multiplatform plans. This past year has been one of pivots and changes in strategy for Xbox, so I wondered if that day-one release commitment for Game Pass Ultimate fell by the wayside. Over the past year, I have tracked every title added to Game Pass Ultimate the day it launched. As of Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy’s launch on August 27, 2026, Xbox has met the goal it set for Game Pass Ultimate content last year. Xbox looks very different now than it did a year ago, though, so reflecting on the past year of Game Pass Ultimate also means reflecting on what else has changed at Xbox over that time. This promotional image from October 2025 promotes "75+ day one games a year" as an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate benefit October 2025: 9 Games Added Sopa: The Tale of the Stolen Potato Little Rocket Lab Ball X Pit Keeper Ninja Gaiden 4 The …