Weekend Reflections #17 | When the Meter Moves

A few months ago, I wrote about where the meter sits.

My argument was simple: pricing is not only about how much something costs. Where you place the meter changes how people experience the product.

Now Microsoft is giving me a rather literal example.

A few days ago, Microsoft emailed me to say that from November, my Xbox Game Pass subscription will no longer include cloud gaming without a monthly time limit. Ultimate will include 15 hours, Premium 10, and Essential 5. After that, additional hours can be purchased.

Microsoft expects the change to directly impact around 4% of subscribers.

I am probably not one of them.

And yet, I am leaving.

The funny part is that I will probably never hit the limit.

I have been a subscriber for years. Some months I barely play. Some months I probably do not even spend an hour gaming.

I keep the subscription because it is there.

Just in case.

So no, I do not desperately need more than 15 hours of cloud gaming every month.

I was not paying for 15 hours.

I was paying for not having to think about hours.

When I subscribed to Game Pass, cloud gaming was included without a monthly meter. Now the subscription remains, but a meter has appeared inside something that was previously included.

You can call that cost control. You can explain the infrastructure economics. Both may be perfectly rational.

But from the customer side, something else happened.

The product contract changed.

Not necessarily the legal contract. The product contract.

The understanding between customer and company about what I am paying for.

And I think this matters particularly in consumer subscriptions.

In B2B, explicit limits are often already part of the commercial model.

Business customers are often already used to seats, usage tiers, negotiated limits and overages. The commercial model makes the meter explicit.

Consumer subscriptions are often simpler.

Pay this amount every month. Get these things.

And sometimes what you are buying is not usage at all.

It is access.

Optionality.

The ability to open the product whenever you want without doing the maths first.

That simplicity is part of the product.

Which is why Microsoft’s 4% figure is interesting.

It appears to estimate direct usage impact. What it does not tell us is how many customers experience the product differently simply because the limit exists.

Because usage is not the only thing being metered here. Trust is too.

In my earlier piece, I wrote that when the meter moves from output to exploration, every prompt becomes a small purchase decision. The meter changes behaviour before the customer pays anything extra.

The same thing happens here.

Yesterday I could start a game without thinking about time.

From November, I have an allowance.

Even if I never reach it, I know it is there.

The experience changed before the bill did.

There is nothing inherently wrong with metered pricing. Sometimes it is the right economic model. Cloud infrastructure costs money. Heavy usage costs more than light usage.

But there is a difference between launching a consumer product with a meter and adding one later to something customers already understood to be included.

One sets the contract.

The other rewrites it.

Not because I need more hours.

I probably never will.

Because somewhere between the subscription and the stopwatch, the product I agreed to pay for became a different product.

Where the meter sits matters.

So does when you put it there.