Important takeaways
- Xbox Game Pass is losing 5 titles later today, October 31st.
- The upcoming wave of departures includes Headbangers: Rhythm Royale and Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery, both of which are easy to beat in just a few hours each.
- Xbox Game Pass is also about to lose Lonely Mountains: Downhill, one of its longest-running games that has been available to Microsoft subscribers for over half a decade.
Xbox Game Pass is losing Mineko's night market and four other titles later today, October 31. This upcoming wave of departures will result in no net change to the size of the Xbox Game Pass content catalog in October 2024.
Microsoft's subscription service typically rotates games from its library every two weeks, and the removals are usually scheduled at the beginning and end of each month. The most recent example of this catalog rotation happened on October 15th, when Xbox Game Pass lost Everspace 2 and four other titles.
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Five more games will now leave Xbox Game Pass later today, October 31st. This time, the popular subscription service will lose Lonely Mountains: Downhill, Mineko's night market, Headbangers: Rhythm Royale, Frog Detective: The Entire Mysteryand the Game Preview version of the Inculinatility. As is normally the case, these titles are expected to drop around midnight local time, meaning that Xbox Game Pass members could technically have until the early hours of November 1st to play them.
Xbox Game Pass games will expire on October 31, 2024
|
Game |
Platform(s) |
Added |
OpenCritic Avg. |
How long to beat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery |
Cloud, console, PC |
October 2022 |
78 |
4 hours |
|
Headbangers: Rhythm Royale |
October 2023 |
68 |
3.5 hours |
|
|
Inculinati (game preview) |
January 2023 |
79 |
8–16.5 hours |
|
|
Lonely Mountains: Downhill |
October 2019 |
81 |
6-34 hours |
|
|
Mineko's night market |
October 2023 |
68 |
17–37.5 hours |
Fortunately for achievement hunters, this gives them enough time to comfortably beat at least some of these soon-to-depart games. Specifically, crowdsourced data from How Long To Beat suggests that a typical playthrough of Headbangers: Rhythm Royale only lasts about 3.5 hours. The same source indicates that Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery takes on average just under four hours to complete. This is said to be enough time to take all 18 of its feats, which it does Frog detective one of the easiest Xbox Game Pass titles to increase one's Gamerscore.
Xbox Game Pass is about to lose one of its longest running games
The late October 2024 wave of departures also includes Lonely Mountains: Downhill. This is one of the longest-running titles on the service, having been added to Xbox Game Pass all the way back in October 2019. Its impending removal may be related to the fact that developer Megagon Industries is currently planning to release Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders in late 2024. But there's currently no indication that the upcoming sequel will one day become an Xbox Game Pass release as Lonely Mountains: Downhill where.
After these departures, the total number of titles that left Microsoft's subscription service in October 2024 will rise to 10. That's also how many new games have been added to the XGP catalog in the last 31 days, not taking into account extended releases such as cloud version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and the PC version of Dead Island 2. Therefore, October 2024 will result in no net change to the size of the Xbox Game Pass library. The next wave of XGP removals is expected to take place on November 15th and will likely be announced by Microsoft by Tuesday, November 5th.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is the highest tier of Microsoft's flagship gaming subscription service offering over 100 game titles that you can play with a single purchase, making it one of the most outstanding value propositions in the Xbox ecosystem to date.
