Xbox users in the US face price increases up to 50 percent on their monthly gaming subscription, making it a great time to check if you're on the right tier or if you even need to subscribe at all. Like it or loathe it, we live in a subscription economy. Music, movies, meal boxes, and more are no longer things you buy once. Gaming is no exception, and while every major player in the sector has some form of sub for players--from PlayStation Plus and Nintendo Switch Online for consoles to Apple Arcade on phones--none of them offered quite as much for a modest monthly fee as Xbox Game Pass. Depending on the subscription tier, the service gave players access to a significant library of titles and was available on Xbox consoles, PC, or via cloud gaming.

Fans have reacted angrily after Microsoft announced price increases to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service. The company announced that the most popular tier of its Netflix-style video games system - available to PC and Xbox players - would rise by more than 50% from £14.99 to £22.99 per month. Reacting on social media, loads of fans said they had cancelled their Game Pass subscriptions, with some reporting the service's cancellation page had crashed due to demand. BBC Newsbeat has asked Microsoft if the outage was linked to a surge in visits. In a blog post detailing the changes to Game Pass, Microsoft said it would offer three tiers - Essential (£10 per month), Premium (£14.99) and Ultimate (£22.99).

With last year's ROG Phone 6, ASUS got our attention with the world's first "wireless" clip-on Peltier cooler, in the sense that it didn't require plugging into a power bank. That, along with a handful of dedicated gaming features -- especially the customizable ultrasonic "AirTriggers" -- already made it a seemingly solid gaming phone. While some of the competition struggled to keep up, ASUS attempts to keep mobile gamers interested with its brand new ROG Phone 7 series which, for the first time, incorporates A.I. for automatic gaming capture. The company also managed to throw in a surprise for the new clip-on cooler: it now doubles as a subwoofer to take full advantage of the ROG Phone's already excellent stereo speakers. The aforementioned A.I. feature can be found in the phone's "Game Genie" dashboard.

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More than a month after revealing the revamped version of PlayStation Plus, Sony has shared the initial lineup of games heading to its new service, covering everything from original PlayStation classics and PlayStation Portable titles to modern hits. The new PlayStation Plus has three tiers, each at a discrete price point and offering varying levels of goodies, and it's all set to go live on June 13th in the Americas. Now that we know which games will be included in each tier -- PlayStation Plus Essential, Extra and Premium -- it's easier to directly compare Sony's service with that of its biggest competitor, Xbox Game Pass from Microsoft. Sony's subscription service is segmented into three parts, with different games and features available depending on how much you pay. PS Plus Essential costs $10 a month or $60 a year, and it's basically the Plus we know now, offering two games to download each month, access to online multiplayer features, cloud storage and discounts.