Is South of Midnight on Xbox Game Pass?
Yes, South of Midnight will be available to play on Xbox Game Pass once it comes out on April 8. However, you’ll have to buy the Premium Edition of the Xbox and PC exclusive if you want access to the Early Access period that begins on April 3.
South of Midnight is headed to Xbox Game Pass …
2025 has already been a great year for gaming even though we’re only three months in, with everything from big-name RPGs like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 to creative indie titles like the hilarious co-op horror game R.E.P.O. giving players tons of great new experiences to enjoy. Soon, we’ll hopefully have another with South of Midnight, the latest action-adventure game from Contrast and We Happy Few developer Compulsion Games that’s scheduled to officially release on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC on April 8.
Set in the American Deep South, South of Midnight puts players in the shoes of Hazel — a young woman who learns and masters unique magical powers in the wake of a hurricane that devastated her hometown of Prospero. As supernatural creatures from Southern myth and folklore mysteriously begin to surface, Hazel must confront them with her Weaver abilities while also working to uncover the secrets of her family’s past.
With its ties to American legend and attractive stop-motion animation-style art direction, South of Midnight is quite fascinating — and because of that, lots of folks are wondering if they’ll be able to check it out on Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service. For the unaware, the program gives you access to hundreds of games in exchange for monthly payments.
Luckily, since Microsoft acquired Compulsion Games for Xbox in 2018, South of Midnight is a first-party Xbox title — and that means it will be available on Game Pass day one, including PC Game Pass for Windows PCs and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for both Xbox and PC (and Xbox Cloud Gaming, too). Note that according to the game’s Xbox store page, it won’t be on the console-only Xbox Game Pass Standard tier at launch, but it’s likely that it will come to it at some point in the future.
… but you won’t get Early Access with it
South of Midnight is indeed launching on Xbox Game Pass, and that’s good news for subscribers to Microsoft’s popular buffet-style gaming service. However, one noteworthy drawback of playing it through the program is that you won’t get Early Access to the title, as no tier of Game Pass includes it.
To play South of Midnight five days early on April 3, you’ll instead need to purchase the game’s Premium Edition. It’s $10 more expensive than the standard version — $49.99 instead of $39.99 — but includes the aforementioned Early Access period as well as digital versions of a special artbook, the soundtrack, a Rob Guillory comic book about the game’s universe titled “The Boo-Hag,” a South of Midnight music video, and a documentary about the game’s development.
Personally, while I do plan on playing South of Midnight, I’m not the type to spend extra on a game just to play it early (though I’d be lying if I said FromSoftware couldn’t sway me to do otherwise). That said, the other extra goodies do sound pretty cool, and thanks to a nice preorder deal, you can get the Premium Edition for just $45.49 at CDKeys instead of the full $49.99. Note that the regular version is also only $34.39 at CDKeys; keep that in mind if you plan on buying it instead of playing through Game Pass.
