Leak Tips China-Specific Xbox Game Pass Tiers and a Way to Play Game Discs on Digital-Only Helix Console

Since the new Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma, became the public face of Xbox Gaming, she has spearheaded a number of significant changes to the company, many of which are directly linked to Xbox Game Pass. The new philosophy at Xbox appears to be to get as many players back onto the platform as possible, whether that be through the new Game Pass “Starter Edition” bundled with Discord Nitro for $9.99 monthly or by decreasing the price of full-fat Game Pass. Now, a new leak from sources who spoke to Windows Central indicating that more changes are coming to Game Pass, specifically a new set of subscription tiers and a potential disc-to-digital program called Positron.

According to the insider sources, the new Game Pass subscription tier set, referred to as Saluki, will be a set of Game Pass tiers specifically designed for the Chinese market, where platforms like Steam have seen massive growth in recent years. With the new Game Pass tiers, Microsoft would be strengthening an already strong foothold in the country, although not much is known about the new Chinese Game Pass tiers other than that. The other leaked info suggests that Microsoft may be planning to launch a disc-to-digital entitlement program that currently goes by Positron internally. The idea is that this would allow gamers to convert their disc games to digital, and while not much is known about this, either, the expectation is that next-gen consoles will not have disc drives, so a way to move those physical game copies into a digital-only console makes sense—especially with how much of the Xbox player base relies on backwards compatibility for older games.