Xbox Game Pass for PC has been unusually cheap since its beta launch last year. The initial $1 trial month rolled into a $5/month subscription, which was more than enough value for a library of over 100 games. But all good things must come to an end, and starting next week, Xbox Game Pass for PC will exit beta and double its monthly fee.

The $5 per month has always been a limited offer; the usual $10 per month (AUD $10.95) is what one would expect to pay for a subscription service. For reference, in the US, Netflix's standard is $13 and Spotify's is $10.

According to the official tweet, the service will be in "general availability," which seems to suggest that it will be available in more regions, but as of this writing, these regions are not specified anywhere. On the other hand, if you have already signed up for a subscription and your billing date is approaching, you will still have to pay an introductory fee.

This price increase coincides with (and probably has nothing to do with) the addition of EA Play to the PC version of Xbox Game Pass. This means that everything in EA's vaults ("The Sims," "Mass Effect," "Battlefield," etc.) is automatically included in this service. This was part of Microsoft's big announcement of next-generation Xbox information this week, when the company announced the official price and release date for the Xbox Series X, the flagship Xbox console.