Xbox game pass seems too good to be true

I know the guys have spoke about this on the podcasts a few times, but I just looked it up on my PC.

Surely it's not that many games for under £10 a month right? I could easily play and enjoy about thirty games on there for such an incredibly low buy in. I just can't believe how good value it is.

If it is, can someone explain how it works? Could I buy it in the Xbox app on my PC and play games there? Is there any sorta trial? I'm very interested.

I only use it on PC so I don't know the exact process for using it on both but there is a trial for Game Pass Ultimate thats 1$ for the first month.

So uh, very little to lose. It's a good service.

Depends how much you want out of the games you play, i like to complete games, sometimes very long ones, and am extremely against the idea of time pressure due to paying a subscription.
I'm currently 74 hours into Wildlands over about 2 months, if it was on Game Pass and that's how i was playing it i'd have just spent £20 on Wildlands which i paid £17 for, if it was a newer game there's obviously a saving to be had there, but i'm also playing other games on the side, Modern Warfare, The Forest, Geometry Wars 3, the occasional CS match, and have no time pressure to complete or move on from any of them.
As some of those other games aren't on Game Pass i'd feel like i was wasting time and money not making the most of my subscription, if i didn't feel like playing a game today that would be a waste too, or if i wanted to watch a movie, or if my work schedule got in the way, or if i had to spend time with family etc...
I can see how it's a good deal if you play games a certain way and are satisfied with that, but for my purposes it's pretty bad.

Yeah, it seems like it should at least cost twice as much.

I've done it with this now, and have previously with Ubisoft, but I have to say it seems insane to me the way they put new games up on these services. You can throw them 5 bucks and play the whole new game? The Ubisoft one is pricier but still 15 for the deluxe version compared to a new game price.

They just put up World of Horror as well. Keep up the good work game pass.

I hope it works out and doesn't reinforce shitty consumer practices and works for developers.

So far the only game I've finished using Game Pass (PC) is The Outer Worlds, which is a game I absolutely would've purchased at launch for full price.

Not sure what the current trial is, but a few months ago it was $1 for a month Ultimate, and then there was a PC trial for $5 for the first three months.

When you set it up on PC, make sure you're setting it up for the right account. I've run into some tediousness because I set it up using my Hotmail account rather than my decade-old Xbox account. So just be wary of that if you have different MS accounts.

@sombre: You can usually get a good trial, something like £1-3 for 1-3 months of it. You can sub through their website. Then you use the app to download the games on your PC and play it. It's honesty incredible. I took a trial out to play Gears 5 with a friend, then the same month I got to play some indie games and then The Outer Worlds came out and so I played that too. All for €1.

It's a really great service and has exposed me to a lot of games I wouldn't have otherwise played. Apparently it's also working out well for devs too on the money side of things, so it seems like a win across the board. This is the right way to do a service-based game program and I'll happily sing its praises to anyone who'll listen.

The only downside I've had with it is that games do rotate out a la Netflix, but they do give you a hefty discount on stuff before they leave if you want to keep playing. Another possible issue that my friend ran into is that you do need to use the Xbox app on PC, which isn't necessarily compatible with some older versions of Windows 10. If you're particular about your OS version numbers and are cautious with upgrading that might be a dealbreaker.

The value is real. I've been loving Game Pass and it has made the XB1X my primary console after spending the initial years of this generation with the PS4. As others have mentioned the best feature is that it lets you experience a wide variety of games with little consequence. I'm currently playing Final Fantasy 15, a game I would have never in my life decided to buy on my own. But it was there so hey why not. It looked interesting so I gave it a shot and I'm having a ton of fun. I played through RAGE 2 recently - a tremendously boring game - but hey it was on the service and I was curious and now I'm glad I didn't buy it at launch. Another great thing about Game Pass is that all first party Microsoft games get released on it as well. So hey maybe you're not a HUGE Gears fan but Gears 5 was there ready to be played in full, day one, for the same subscription cost. I don't care much about Halo, but I recently played though Halo 5 and will probably check out Halo Infinite when it drops because why not right?

Game Pass is really tremendous and is the primary reason why I'm probably going to stick with the Xbox for next gen - that and the fact that my Elite controller and my Wireless headphones will work on that hardware as well. Now heres hoping there will finally be more first party games to give a damn about.

It is too good to be true. I paid $1 for the first year.

The fact that Microsoft's exclusives are on there is so nuts. If I bought one or two a year instead of Game Pass, it'd be dumb because I'd miss out on all the cool lesser known games on the service.

I'm more inclined to quit on games earlier these days, which isn't great for slow burns. But the trade off for at least a dozen or two games I want to try is worth it. And since I finally have a decent laptop again, Ultimate is even more of an insane value.

Subscription services seem like the preferred way of doing things in the entertainment realm these days. From my perspective it seems to not make sense, but the numbers have to be there to back it up on the revenue front.

@cikame: Ultimate comes with Live Gold, and the ability to use PC or console versions. Also gives good discounts on the games, so if you like them enough to want to 100% them, they give you that option to own it as well. Honestly for the price, this service is an insane value either way. I don't see any AAA Ubisoft games showing up on Gamepass, they will probably integrate Uplay at some point, EA Origin is already on there as a separate sub, not the full catalogue, but it's decent. I'm not saying go get all the subs you can, it's nice that it's an option. For you, this seems bad, but this way someone can play a ton of new and older games for peanuts. Otherwise, have fun spending full price on every game you want to play, whether you're going to like it or not, with no refunds.

Edit: and it's not even the base version of most games, they are the full deluxe versions, so for me in Canada to play those it would usually be $100 EACH. OR I buy the Xbox S for $150, and then $10 for gamepass, and my buy-in ends up being $160 for a shite ton of games. And it's not like they leave the service quickly, you can still 100% most of them.

Yeah it's pretty insane. Will be interesting to see what changes with the new generation if at all.

The value here is ridiculous. That "$1 Ultimate trial" is even better than that. It takes your Gold or Game Pass subscription, adds a month and converts it all to Game Pass Ultimate (gold + game pass) up to 3 years. I had a couple years of Gold, paid $1 and BOOM, I had a couple years of Game Pass too. I have played through a lot of games. If I was a kid or had very little money to spend on games, this is absolutely the way to go. For roughly the price of two games a year, you can access to a pretty nice library, plus all first party Microsoft games are on Game Pass Day 1. So, I got to play Gears 5, Forza Horizon 4, Sea of Theives and others for "free."

I honestly love the service and getting games on pc is also easy all you need is to download their app i've downloaded unavowed and deaths gambit using the pc app and had mo issues playing them

The business model is simple enough, it's basically netflix for games back when they had licenses to all the tv shows and movies etc. 10$ a month is 120$ a year, so the equivalent of selling 2 games a year (which I'm willing to bet is the average) I am sure the price will eventually go up like netflix has, but right now the main concern is bringing in people. So they could be selling at a loss in order to give as much value as possible, this could increase interest in their new hardware in the future that maybe they could now get away with for selling "for profit" (meaning not take a loss on each unit like usual). When you consider that the 500$ system, basically comes with extremely cheap game rentals it's a much better value. (not saying they will do this but it could happen).

They could also add in their streaming service and the regular xbox live service for an additional price later on as well, making it a bit cheaper for consumers to have all 3.

Last question pals:

Is it good on the PC? I don't have an XBO, but I'd very much like to play some of these games on my really powerful PC. And what are the options?

@sombre: It's fine on PC apart from the caveat I had in my earlier response about the Windows version issues. The launcher's kind of barebones, but I haven't really minded. However, the Xbox app has been a bit of a resource hog when running in the background, so I'd recommend only having the launcher on while actively playing. Not sure what you mean by options, but pricewise I think it's currently $1 a month for the first month, normally $5 a month for the PC only subscription.

@sombre: PC worked well for me besides how you can only use XBox controllers on it. I'm sure there is some work around and maybe it's been fixed but it was lame at the time.

I dont quite understand the PC version.

I thought the PC version wasl ike £5 a month, but the ONLY option in the M$ store is the "Game Pass Ultimate" for £11 a month. Now, the first month is only a pound, but if I'm committing to this, I want the actual price that's advertised. I tried to download the Beta version of the app (The standalone one) and it crashes on install.

How exactly do I get the PC only version?

I figured it out- it was 5 menus deep

@sombre: it's also the first result when googling "PC GamePass"

The trick is, I've bought up until 2022, but yet haven't played any game on it for the past three months. There are about a dozen games that, if I had the time, would totally play.

I just had a lot of problems with the app. I downloaded the "Xbox(BETA)" app and when I tried to install it, it failed 3 times. Then I had to turn on UAC as part of Windows which then made it work. I've sorted it now, it was just a bit obfuscated

Gamepass Ultimate is amazing, no idea how they are funding it, but its the reason i dont turn my ps4 on anymore. That's all a console needs when they are this close to being equal, reasons to keep coming back. Assuming its a loss leader for that very reason?

It's possible I might be thinking so highly of it because it was ridiculously cheap after the conversion of existing live months, and I had already paid for some amount of pc gamepass months, so yeah I think I'm good for close to three years at this point. I probably wouldn't pay $15 a month.

Game Pass has a ton of games that I don't want/would pay full price for, its also the reason I won't get the Series X at launch.

As others have said, conversion of existing Live is a great deal. I don’t think I would pay $15 a month for it.

@htr10: @north6: Yeah, that conversion was amazing. I'm paid up for like 4 more years or something. Felt like I was getting away with something when I saw that.

You install an XBox GamePass app on your PC and you must have Windows 10! I don't know if there is a trial but the first 3 months is $1/month followed by $5/month afterwards. No joke the value is there. I've subscribed since July paying a total of ($28 + tax so far) and played over 20 games to completion.

XBox Game Pass for PC is an incredible value especially since you get to play Microsoft exclusives like Halo, Gears and Forza. And sometimes you get to play games on launch like the Outer Worlds and the upcoming new Ori game.

I would easily pay up to $15/month for this service if I didn't own any consoles and didn't play any games on other platforms. Honestly for my game playing habits, I think $8-10/month is the sweet spot.

Note that the PC games differ from the Xbox One games such as how the Outer Wilds is only available on Xbox One but not on PC.

It's a stupid good value on PC. Like yyninja said the selection is somewhat slimmer than on console, but it's half the price. For the price of one full priced new game you get an incredible library.