In fairness, they did just increase the price of all of their consoles due to tariff effects on hardware production. Same with playstation. It's pretty much the first generation in history consoles have gotten more expensive after release.

I doubt this is driving the game pass price increase though.

They bet on GP and acquisitions would increase their hw units sold and it did not happen. They can't really afford to subsidize day and date games from all their studios at the previous price anymore. And this is why they are now also releasing the games on the other consoles too. They just became the biggest 3rd party publisher, Xbox is not the focus going forward imo.