Leaked Xbox Game Pass Starter Edition looks to bundle a small library of games with your Discord Nitro membership

Code's emerged with plenty of signal, but absolutely zero ceremony

Days after announcing a price cut for the existing Xbox Game Pass tiers, which'll no longer get new Call of Duty games at launch, it appears Microsoft have an all-new tier lurking up their sleeves. Dubbed Game Pass Starter Edition, leaks suggest it'll be something akin to the the established baseline Essential Game Pass tier, but bundled in with a paid subscription to Discord Nitro.

The Verge report that just after Xbox boss Asha Sharma teased the other day that people "might start to see some code in the wild" related to a collaboration between the company and Discord, such wild code has appeared.

It looks to be for a new Game Pass tier dubbed Starter Edition, which'll come bundled with Discord Nitro - that being the chatting service's paid subscription offering the likes of beefier upload limits and HD video streaming. While as of the start of this month, folks who sign up for Game Pass' most expensive Ultimate get a month's free Discord Nitro as part of that subscription, this new offering looks aimed at adding extra juice to Game Pass by tempting in newbies who're interested in paying for Discord first and foremost.

In line with that, the Starter Edition's offerings seem on par with Game Pass' current cheapest tier, Essential. You get access to more than 50 games from the current Game Pass library, with the leak suggesting the likes of Stardew Valley, Grounded, and Fallout 4 will be among them. 10 hours a month of streaming through Xbox's cloud gaming service and the ability to rack up Xbox reward points in games round out the offering. The only question is what the price'll be. As of writing, Xbox Game Pass Essential costs £6.99/$9.99 per month. Discord Nitro's basic tier will set you back £2.49/$2.99 a month, while the full Nitro tier costs £7.99/$9.99 per month. One would assume for this Starter Edition to have any appeal, it'll be cheaper than a combination of the two currently is, but no price has been revealed yet.

Alongside the aformentioned price cuts to existing Game Pass tiers, new Xbox boss Asha Sharma's current plan of attack for the service is clearly doing everything the company can justify to get more folks on board with it, sans compromising direct launch sales of their big hitters. The Verge note that a new Game Pass tier which comes bundled with Netflix could well be the next port of call. Accompanying these moves from the new regime has been the sort of ruthless PR push you might expect from a politician seeking to curry as much favour as they can during their early days in office, while also attempting to separate themselves from their predecessors' baggage.

At least, I assume that's the reason you'd put out a big corpospeak memo which includes a list of buzzword phrases like "signal over ceremony", "core before more", and "clarity is kindness". You forgot up is down, Xbox! How are you supposed to get out of Davy Jones' locker if you don't make your staff recite that while running from side to side across the building?