MS Rewards Gamepass update starting Oct 2025

peish

Member

[Important update] Changes to Rewards Catalog

Starting October 1st, you will no longer be able to directly redeem your Rewards points for Xbox Game Pass subscriptions. To continue enjoying Xbox Game Pass using your Rewards points, you will need to first redeem your Rewards points for an Xbox gift card and then redeem your Xbox gift card for your desired Game Pass subscription, as follows:
Step 1: Visit the Microsoft Rewards catalog.
Step 2: Redeem your Rewards points for an Xbox gift card[TD1] in a denomination that is sufficient to cover the cost of your desired Game Pass subscription. If you do not have enough Rewards points for the desired Xbox gift card denomination, you may use an alternative payment method to cover the rest.
Step 3: Use your Microsoft Account balance from your redeemed Xbox gift card to purchase your desired Game Pass subscription. If your Microsoft Account balance is insufficient to cover your desired Game Pass subscription, you may use an alternative payment method to cover the rest.
When your Game Pass subscription expires, you can buy another Game Pass subscription by either (i) repeating Steps 1-3, above; or (ii) using an alternative payment method to purchase a Game Pass subscription.

WHAT THE PHIL?
 
Show Me The Money GIF
 
I always spend it on gift cards already.
The thing is, if you use reward points to directly buy a Gamepass subscription, you are paying more than if you buy it through a third-party online store and do the conversion....

Like you, I also use reward points for gift cards and with them buy games, reduce prices, or buy controllers or other peripherals from the store. And since you can choose the specific amount of points to use and convert into money, everything is ideal.
 
Last edited:
Well seeing as the recession is getting harder people will be going out less but might have just enough to justify a gamepass sub to play some games with the boy's.
 
I have not touched the points in forever. I probly have enough to buy a ROG Ally Xbox by now.
Or at least a new controller. Will they ever release a redesign of the Elite? I want Microsoft to use whatever rumble is in the Dual Sense.
 
lol wtf. Why on earth? Adding another step for fun I guess

I guess there must be some phd marketing study that adding this step, you will see a few dollars leftover in your gift card balances, makes you willingly to topup with cash to not let it go to waste.

In the past, with just reward points to GP subs, nobody thinks of their Xbox wallet
 
lol wtf. Why on earth? Adding another step for fun I guess

Because they charge more points for Xbox gift cards than they do Game Pass subscriptions.

$12 Xbox Gift Card - 11400 <-- price of PC Game Pass
$20 Xbox Gift Card - 19000 <-- price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate

Point costs for subs....

PC Game Pass - 7750
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate - 12000
 
Last edited:
Because they charge more points for Xbox gift cards than they do Game Pass subscriptions.

$12 Xbox Gift Card - 11400 <-- price of PC Game Pass
$20 Xbox Gift Card - 19000 <-- price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate

Point costs for subs....

PC Game Pass - 7750
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate - 12000


And this change came out of the blue, no pre-empt this time, all our points belongs Mr Phil now.
 
The thing is, if you use reward points to directly buy a Gamepass subscription, you are paying more than if you buy it through a third-party online store and do the conversion....

Like you, I also use reward points for gift cards and with them buy games, reduce prices, or buy controllers or other peripherals from the store. And since you can choose the specific amount of points to use and convert into money, everything is ideal.

Yeah, but if I use points directly then I have zero cash out of pocket. For me, that has been the entire point of MS rewards.
 
Because they charge more points for Xbox gift cards than they do Game Pass subscriptions.

$12 Xbox Gift Card - 11400 <-- price of PC Game Pass
$20 Xbox Gift Card - 19000 <-- price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate

Point costs for subs....

PC Game Pass - 7750
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate - 12000

GPU wasn't 12K anymore, they already increased it to 17K earlier this year.
 
Last edited:
Oh, I see it now. That's weird. Why have there if it can't be used?

I don't think they've ever officially announced it, that 17K tile just started showing up for people around Jan or Feb at the start of this year.

Like this thing, they've formally announced it, maybe the 17K thing was going to happen but didn't and they decided to just take off GPU from Rewards altogether.
 
GPU wasn't 12K anymore, they already increased it to 17K earlier this year.
You have to be level 2 to redeem for 12K points.

** Edit - I just noticed it's 17K to auto-redeem one month. Crazy it's 5K more to auto-redeem.

Also, they seemed to have removed the 3 month option. When did that happen?
 
Last edited:
GPU wasn't 12K anymore, they already increased it to 17K earlier this year.
I'm still paying 12k for a months sub.

This change means my ride is officially over. I barely scrape the 12k points a month as it is. I reckon I'll have to start forking out cold hard cash once every three months.

Ah well, it was good while it lasted!
 
Last edited:
Yeah, but if I use points directly then I have zero cash out of pocket. For me, that has been the entire point of MS rewards.
I don't know if I understand you, but for some time now, there's been the option to convert your rewards points into cash, in any amount you want, without being limited to the fixed, rounded amounts of the cards.

That is, I choose the amount of points I want to convert into cash and use it to buy games in the store in the quantity I need. For me, that's more important and beneficial. In fact, I still can't believe they'll enable something like this.

And as I said, buying a GPS pass subscription from the official store when you can get much better deals in third-party stores and using the conversion is a mistake.
 
I don't know if I understand you, but for some time now, there's been the option to convert your rewards points into cash, in any amount you want, without being limited to the fixed, rounded amounts of the cards.

That is, I choose the amount of points I want to convert into cash and use it to buy games in the store in the quantity I need. For me, that's more important and beneficial. In fact, I still can't believe they'll enable something like this.

And as I said, buying a GPS pass subscription from the official store when you can get much better deals in third-party stores and using the conversion is a mistake.

How do you convert rewards points into cash? Are you talking about gift cards?
 
Last edited:
How do you convert rewards points into cash? Are you talking about gift cards?
In the latest update, they added the option to convert your points into cash in any amount you want, without having to purchase gift cards with predetermined amounts.
Now you can redeem, for example, $6, $7, $13... whatever amount you need, and the conversion is more beneficial.
 
In the latest update, they added the option to convert your points into cash in any amount you want, without having to purchase gift cards with predetermined amounts.
Now you can redeem, for example, $6, $7, $13... whatever amount you need, and the conversion is more beneficial.

What region are you in? I don't see that option anywhere. I check the Rewards page and the app.
 
Because they charge more points for Xbox gift cards than they do Game Pass subscriptions.

$12 Xbox Gift Card - 11400 <-- price of PC Game Pass
$20 Xbox Gift Card - 19000 <-- price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate

Point costs for subs....

PC Game Pass - 7750
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate - 12000
Oh No Omg GIF
 
What region are you in? I don't see that option anywhere. I check the Rewards page and the app.
Europe but the update was global.

I've never done it from the Microsoft website or Store but fron console OS where is easy redeem points.
One option is to manually redeem yourself by typing in the amount of money you want.
 
Figured this was gonna happen, the reward points thing was never gonna last as you could just get free game pass by using their search engine + other services.

They'll adding difficulty to the process until they eventually phase it out or make it too useless to bother with.

Literally the same enshittification all the silicon valley business models do too. I like Game Pass, but it will eventually succumb to this, and I'll eventually have my drop out point.
 
That's a gift card my man
Oh, were you referring to converting them into money to use outside of the MS/Xbox store? I was always talking about converting points into money to use in the MS Store to buy games and other things.

As I said, now you can choose the number of points to use and the amount of money to redeem by typing it in that tab, and you don't have to resort to the various typical €2-€5-€10 gift cards you used to have.
 
Oh, were you referring to converting them into money to use outside of the MS/Xbox store? I was always talking about converting points into money to use in the MS Store to buy games and other things.

As I said, now you can choose the number of points to use and the amount of money to redeem by typing it in that tab, and you don't have to resort to the various typical €2-€5-€10 gift cards you used to have.

Yeah....no worries. I knew you could choose whatever amount you wanted. That's a cool feature they added.
 
Top Bottom