Microsoft teased a new partnership with Discord earlier this week that led some players to wonder if the popular chat platform’s paid Nitro subscriptions would start getting bundled with Game Pass. It turns out the opposite is happening. According to the latest leaks, a new tier of the Xbox service called Game Pass “Starter Edition” is coming to Discord users in the near future.
Images of the newest version of Game Pass were discovered and shared by Discord Previews (via The Verge) and point to some of the benefits of Xbox’s Netflix-like game library becoming part of Discord’s existing $10 a month Nitro subscription. Game Pass “Starter Edition” will reportedly give Discord users access to over 50 games, including Stardew Valley and Fallout 4, as well as up to 10 hours of cloud game streaming a month.
Discord Nitro ($9.99) Subscribers can soon enjoy free access to Xbox Game Pass (Starter Edition).
This includes:
– Access to over 50 games from the game pass library
– 10 hours a month of cloud game streaming
– Xbox rewards pic.twitter.com/84a0l80mFl— Discord Previews (@DiscordPreviews) April 23, 2026
xCloud open-source developer Redphx spotted new code suggesting the Starter Edition tier would include access to third-party games in addition to Microsoft’s first-party lineup. The current version of Game Pass Essential, which the Starter Edition seems to be based on, currently offers mostly perennial favorites like Hades and Warhammer: Vermintide 2 rather than new releases.
The leaks come a month after Xbox CEO Asha Sharma met with Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters about ways to bundle Game Pass with other subscriptions, and just a week after Microsoft announced day-and-date Call of Duty releases would be removed from Game Pass Ultimate to bring down its price. The company is reportedly exploring other ways of changing the service to make it more affordable and win over new subscribers.
Sharma released an internal memo on Thursday laying out her vision for Xbox and how it should navigate an increasingly competitive landscape. She pointed to daily active users as the most important metric, something that will certainly go up by bundling Game Pass with Nitro.
It’s unclear if the price of that subscription will go up to compensate or if this is a temporary experiment to see how the math works out for both companies. Microsoft was in talks to buy Discord for $10 billion back in 2021. It ended up buying Activision Blizzard for $70 billion instead.
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