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Xbox Game Pass: how to get three years for $1

You can get up to three years of Game Pass for just $1 (£1 in the UK) by making use of a little known trick, read on to find out how you can get this Xbox deal

Xbox Game Pass' logo on a black background.

With the introduction of Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft has created a way for all kinds of players to easily expand their gaming horizons. While we might once have thought ‘That sounds interesting, but do I want to buy a whole new game just to try it?’, we now think ‘That sounds really interesting, I hope it’s on Game Pass’ – and did you know that there’s a way to get three years of Game Pass for just $1? (or £1 in the UK).

For whatever reason, this deal isn’t advertised widely, but it’s available to anybody who has an active Xbox Live Gold membership. If you’ve pre-paid your Xbox Live Gold for the next three years, then your membership will be updated to an Xbox Game Pass membership for the duration of the time that you’ve paid for.

Considering that so many of us have Xbox Live Gold memberships, that’s a lot of people who will potentially have cheap access to three years of Game Pass – and they probably don’t even know it. It’s important to keep in mind that it depends on how much Xbox Live Gold you have already paid for.

The maximum length of time that you can pre-pay for Xbox Live Gold is three years and if you do this and get the Game Pass trial at the same time, you’ll then get Game Pass for the whole three years for just $1. If you’ve got a shorter length of time, you’ll get Game Pass for free for all of that, with an extra month for the Game Pass thrown in too. If that’s not clear enough, let us break it down for you:

How to get three years of Game Pass for $1

  • First, you need to become an Xbox Live Gold member, we’re sure that many Xbox owners will have done this long before reading this guide.
  • Pre-pay as far into the future as you can afford to do – it is possible to this for up to three years.
  • Pay $1 for your first month of Xbox Game Pass
  • Cancel the Game Pass subscription before the first month passes

Once you’ve cancelled, you won’t be charged for Game Pass again, but you will have your membership upgraded to a Game Pass membership until your pre-paid Xbox Live Gold subscription runs out, essentially allowing you to enjoy three years of Game Pass for just $1 (or £1 if you’re in the UK).

Xbox Game Pass promotional image showing a selection of Microsoft owned characters, including Master Chief.

This is wonderful news if you’re somebody who’s just paid for the next three years of Xbox Live Gold. But even if you’ve just got the rest of the year, or even a few months, $1 for Game Pass during that time is still a fantastic deal.

Check out our list of every game on Game Pass for an idea of what you’ll gain access to, along with a look at August’s Game Pass releases. You’ll see that there are so many wonderful games, it’ll be hard to give it up once your trial period ends.