UPDATE (04/09/24, 4:00 PM BST): HoYoverse has provided VG247 with the following statement: “Genshin Impact is a free-to-play game. You do not need to purchase Game Pass Ultimate or Core to play the game in Co-Op Mode. Players with a Game Pass Ultimate subscription can receive in-game bundles upon the game’s launch and after subsequent version updates, as well as play Genshin Impact on Xbox Cloud Gaming.”

Original story follows below.

One of the big reveals that ended up arriving during Gamescom 2024 was the announcement that Genshin Impact‘s set to arrive on Xbox this November, four years after it originally came out in 2020. However, a detail on the game’s Xbox Store page seems to suggest that despite it being free-to-play, you’ll need to invest in a Game Pass subscription in order to access Genshin’s online multiplayer elements.

As spotted by a user on ResetEra, Genshin’s Xbox Store page listing states: “Online multiplayer on console requires Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or Xbox Game Pass Core (sold separately).”

While the Game Pass logo was featured at the end of the announcement trailer for Xbox Genshin, the inclusion of this line has confused some prospective players, many of whom look to have assumed it’d just mean those with a subscription would just be given some extra in-game items or bonuses. For context, Xbox removed the subscription requirement for a lot of free-to-play games back in 2021, when Xbox Live Gold was the name of the thing you’d have needed to pay for in order to access multiplayer.

This is why if you go to play the likes of Fortnite, Destiny 2, and Apex Legends via Xbox, you won’t have to pay for an Xbox subscription to play online. The requirement listed for Genshin is worded in similar way as one applied to the paid versions of Final Fantasy 14 on Xbox, which require a Game Pass subscription in order to play online, but the store listing for the free trial version of that game, which allows you to “play free up to level 70 with no restrictions on play time”, doesn’t list any Game Pass requirement.

Add-in the fact that you can currently pre-order Genshin’s Xbox port for £9.99/$9.99 via a bundle that mirror’s the pre-orders that’ve been offered for some Hoyoverse PlayStation 5 releases, despite it being free-to-play, and you’ve got some folks wondering if the indication it’ll require Game Pass for online is some kind of error on Xbox’s part or something that’ll be further clarified in the run up to release on September 20.

VG247 has reached out to Xbox for comment.

Are you planning to play Genshin Impact on Xbox when it arrives in November? Let us know below.