Six New Xbox Game Pass Games To Try In July

If you’re someone who likes to play games buffet-style via Microsoft’s video game-flavored answer to Netflix, you’ve got a lot to look forward to: a smart TV app, the ability to play next-gen games on Xbox One, the dawning of an era in which, for better or worse, this is the only way anybody plays games. But that’s all still a bit of a way out. For now, some new games.

This month’s Xbox Game Pass lineup won’t set the world on fire, but it does include The Medium, a timed Xbox Series X/S console exclusive that wouldn’t have been possible on Game Pass even a couple months ago, prior to a server-side upgrade that brought the service up to next-gen standards.

Here’s everything coming to Xbox Game Pass in the next few weeks:

July 8

Dragon Quest Builders 2 (Cloud)

Tropico 6 (Cloud, Console, and PC)

UFC 4 (Console)

July 15

Bloodroots (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Farming Simulator 19 (Cloud, Console, and PC)

The Medium (Cloud)

But when Microsoft giveth, it also generally taketh away, and so a small handful of games will be departing for less-green pastures. On the upside, two of them are older EA UFC games, which really aren’t that good anyway. But Downwell, a positively incredible side-scrolling roguelike about falling down a well, is also leaving, which is a bummer.

Here’s the full list of games that will be removed from Game Pass this month:

July 14

EA Sports UFC (Console)

EA Sports UFC 2 (Console)

July 15

Endless Space 2 (PC)

Downwell (PC)

CrossCode (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Xbox Game Pass, in case you’ve made it this far into a post about Xbox Game Pass and still don’t know what it is, is Microsoft’s games-on-demand service. By default, it costs $10 per month, but a $15 “Ultimate” tier comes with additional perks like an Xbox Live Gold subscription and access to the EA Play library. Soon, though, all pricing tiers will lack Downwell—a tragedy.