Does Gamepass bother anyone?

The base Game Pass subscription is $9.99/mo (the ultimate subscription, which includes both console + PC + xbox live gold is $15/mo). $10 * 12 months = $120/year, which is roughly the price of 2 new AAA games ($60 *2). So I don't think the value proposition is actually that bad for those people.

Also, while the netflix comparison is obviously appropriate, I'm sure that negotiating licensing deals with game publishers is very different than negotiating film and TV rights with studios. As those licensing deals make up the bulk of Netflix's expenses, it's hard to directly compare profitability. In other words, it's too simplistic to say "netflix struggled to turn a profit, so game pass necessarily will too." Game Pass is probably unprofitable and will be for some time, but we just don't know enough about the underlying deals to speculate beyond that.

You can buy a $300 console and subscribe to a service for $15 a month and get an ever increasing library of games?

What exactly is the problem here?

Seems like you are just looking for something to find fault with.

I am confused as to why you made exactly the same post as the guy on page 1.

Because it's a common bot tactic to just randomly copy and paste a post to make the account seem more legitimate before they go posting spam

@bicycleham: The more you know! I suppose I should have thought of that.

@digitaldisco said:

It's not that great of value when you can get most of the games on steam including season passes at a cheaper price. It's okay, if you only own a xbox and you're happy to either pay 100 bucks (Aussie) to own the base game (not including season pass or dlc) or wait 6 months praying the game shows up on gamepass.

The roster of games is kind of dog shit. Half of these titles are made up of bethesda games and the rest are underwhelming indie games that usually go for like 5 bucks on steam. I'm all for everyone getting more access to games, but so far I'm not impressed. It comes across as a glorified online demo library at best.

As someone who doesn’t like AAA games or what Sony has done to the marketplace with trailer-driven hype machines, I think Gamepass is the savior of the industry. Just like Netflix, niche genres will get more attention because the platform wants breadth.

I really disagree on both of your points here.

On the value proposition, even if you only play 2-3 big $60 new releases and a smattering of smaller indie titles through Game Pass in one year, you've already gotten an equivalent monetary value.

There's also a lot of value in being able to try things you're not sure if you'll like with little risk. Yes, if you make up your mind fast enough on a new purchase, you might be able to get a refund, but even then you still had to put up your cash to try the game knowing you may not be able to get your money back if you don't like it.

As for the library of games, part of that is certainly up to your personal taste, but there's a lot of good stuff on there with some solid variety. Yes, MS's first-party output hasn't been stellar lately, but that is going to be bolstered a lot by acquisitions like Bethesda. But that aside, there are a lot of indie titles that launch there on day one, or even bigger name publishers/developers dropping games there on day one like with the recent ports of Yakuza.

I said the value is okay, if you only own a console and want nothing to do with pcs. How can you disagree with that? I view gamepass as something for that one cool Uncle or Aunty that has to keep their nieces and nephews entertained. I would play the shit out of it if I was ten years old and had no concept of money or how the world works.

More importantly, the value of gamepass is dependent on decent internet and how much one can save if the game they really want to play (not something that just exists on gamepass) is available to them outside of having to fork out 100 aussie dollarydoos... not 60!

I live in Australia, so we don't have the privilege of both cheaper console games and fast/reliable internet like you do in the States. So just try and imagine having to juggle both the small disk space of the xbox and slow download speeds because little billy wants to play a 50 gig Bethesda RPG that for some reason runs worse on a console that has a better cpu than my pc.

Wtf?

Unless you know how to set the console into home mode and play it offline, you're still at the whim of losing progress every 20 mins because the internet decided to shit the bed. Also, goodluck playing the game 6 months down the track, because Microsoft decided to remove it for no reason, other than to push you into buying the game at the very low discounted price slighly less than $100. This is why I call it a glorified online demo store. There are too many variables outside of the consumer's control that I find outweighs the benefit of some deluded peace of mind you get for wasting 15 bucks every month on a service that isn't meant for game enthusiasts.

I own gamepass (should probably stop typing and go cancel it....) and the last thing I want to think about is "Oh shit, I need to play over $300 AUD worth of games within the year to get my monies worth." I don't know about you, but that's not a healthy way to view the world. I would rather pay more upfront for a decent machine that can play every game offline and at a higher fidelity than consoles.

@grizdotcom: It's already been said before but part of the reason I like Game Pass is to be able to play a game I otherwise wouldn't pay full price for. Outriders is a good example. It doesn't seem amazing but I still feel like trying it out and it's coming to Game Pass so I don't have to worry about spending $60 on it. I've also found great indie games that I never would have played or heard of that would have been the price of one month of Game Pass by themselves. I also have maybe a weird use case but it's still a benefit for me, which is that some of my friends don't have a PC and some multiplayer games we play are still not crossplay. That means I get to use Game Pass on my Xbox One X without having to pay extra just to join them, like on Battlefield games for example. That saves me money in the long run from having to buy duplicate copies on PC and on Xbox.

I'm also a bit confused about this part:

Unless you know how to set the console into home mode and play it offline, you're still at the whim of losing progress every 20 mins because the internet decided to shit the bed.

Because at the end you say you'd rather buy a decent machine that can play games offline but if you build this machine, that isn't going to make the games that rely on servers suddenly stop relying on the servers. You're still gonna have the exact same problem with internet dropping on a PC. Hitman 3 on PC asks for an internet connection just as the console versions do, and when my internet drops, it messes it up too. I don't see this as a Game Pass problem, it's more of an "always online" problem.

The other part of the last paragraph was this:

I own gamepass (should probably stop typing and go cancel it....) and the last thing I want to think about is "Oh shit, I need to play over $300 AUD worth of games within the year to get my monies worth." I don't know about you, but that's not a healthy way to view the world.

I would agree, except that most people are already doing that without intending to. It's not an active problem that most people are stressing about. It's a guaranteed conclusion if they play tons of games on Game Pass in the first place. I'm saving money by doing what I would have done already, except I would be spending it individually on each game which would cost more than Game Pass does right now. There's no rush to get my money's worth because I'm already doing it by playing.

It's okay if that's not how you use Game Pass though. It would be good to figure out if it's worth it for you personally because it only really saves you money if you were already going to play a lot of stuff that's on it. However, I've looked it up and I'm a bit confused...Game Pass Ultimate seems to be $16 a month in Australia, and if games are $100 then it saves even more money than in the US. You only need to play two games in a year to make up the money. Unless you play less than 2 full priced games a year? Even using your example of $300, that's 3 games a year which is the exact same as the US value.

The one thing I do worry about is future ownership of games. Right now it works for me because by the time Microsoft removes a game from the service, I already played it to completion. But the part I worry about is if I want to play them in the future. Microsoft controls that part of it and that's a legitimate concern. I can play 20 year old games on my PC because I have them saved locally, but in the future that's gonna be a big problem. However, this also mixes in with the "always online/games as a service" problem too because even if you own a physical copy of say, Destiny 2, you aren't gonna be able to play it anyways if the servers go down. So that is partially still out of consumers' hands even if you reject Game Pass.

My concern with Game Pass is exactly that it will turn out like Netflix, prioritizing quantity over quality and constantly putting out mediocre titles, perhaps once or twice a decade releasing something genuinely great like The Irishman.

When people buy a $60 game, they tend to think critically if the game is worth its price. But when it's on a subscription, it doesn't have to be very good for people to give it a shot. If you already know that your game is going to Game Pass, what motivation do you really have to make it great?

We've already seen this with Spotify too, they pay out the artist after someone listens to 2 and something minutes of a song... so why make songs longer than the required 2+ minutes, at that point you're just losing money. The faster the consumer makes it to the next song, and the one after that, the more money the artist makes.

I don't like it that much pretty much because of the same reasons I don't like Netflix, Disney+ etc.

* One more subscription to pay

* You have no ownership, if you want to play something that is no longer available you're fucked

* More exclusivity, as all Bethesda games are now locked into game pass I see simiar stuff going down in the future making you have to get several subscriptions.

*If Netflix has shown us anything this is very bad for niche games. After physical became obsolete (DVDs) entire tiers of movies (Lets call them B Movies) no longer exist. Either it's very big budget or no budget at all. Old movies might as well not exist if Netflix shows us anything. for movies I have actually gone back to buying physical, supporting different boutique labels that release interesting stuff as the offering on streaming is really bad (at least in my country), I think a well sorted rental shop had way better selection.

@apewins

'cos Microsoft don't pay a flat rate, so good games might still get more money?

'cos GamePass isn't the only distribution method, so most devs will still want to sell their games elsewhere?

My problem with Game Pass is that it reduces the chances of Physical Releases. Square Enix in particular release only digitally especially in the UK on XBox. Game Pass does encourage this and there are games that will not date such as Dragon Quest 11 which I want to own and play. I'm not buying it unless I can buy it physically as I like the artwork and I want to collect it. I completed DQ8 on the PS2 in lockdown and I want to keep owning it. I will buy DQ11 in the future probably pre owned on another platform.

If this keeps up XBox will only be a platform for people who do not want to own games which will exclude all off us who want to collect specific genres and series of games.

I can see my skipping XBox Series X and going to Nintendo next time I upgrade.

Saying that I do love Doom Eternal and XBox Live Gold gave us Gears 4/ Gears 5 which I would never have bought so there are upsides no doubt

The best part about Gamepass is having a "shared library" for multiplayer games.

My friends all have Gamepass. There's no worry about someone not owning a game or not wanting to spend money for a game we might play for a week before moving on from it. Gamepass fixes that issue entirely.

It also let's me try a ton of games that I otherwise would have skipped over. I've found a ton of gems that fall into that bucket.

Gamepass isn't supposed to take the place of games that I purchase outright, it's just an amazing bonus that's well worth $15/month.

I have Game Pass on PC and generally really like it. But the addition of Bethesda games made me find a snag. The games are put in a restricted folder on the drive it's installed on. I have lifted that restriction, but even still, I can't find a way to do things like mod games. So Fallout 4, for example, is an absolute mess for my computer on PC for a whole host of reasons through gamepass, but namely because the launcher won't accept my video setting changes making the game's output take up a tiny portion of the top left of my screen and looking illegible. I couldn't even navigate the menu. On Steam, you can add mods that fix the launcher as well as all the other parts about that game that are still busted.

So, essentially, gamepass on PC doesn't allow you to best take advantage of what the PC has over the consoles; modding and more user control. But, aside from that, I've been very satisfied.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here, but you can play downloaded game pass games offline. It follows the standard subscription service model of "you need to connect to the internet at least once every 30 days so we can verify your subscription status." So you can play an offline game through game pass without needing to be constantly connected to the internet...

@tds418: This is only true if your console is set as your "home" console. If you have multiple Xboxen (or just haven't set the console as your home console for some reason) then Internet interruptions can boot you out of a game. I regularly use 2 Xboxes (bought a Series X and moved my old Xbox to another room) and Internet interruptions can kick me out on my second one, though my home console doesn't have that issue.

On the other hand you have to be logged in to play ANYTHING digital on a console that's not set on your home console. Internet disruptions can kick you out of digital purchased games too. Only physical games will work on an Xbox that's not connected to the Internet if it's not your home console (or games belonging to an account that does have it set as the home console I think.)

I find the complaint of the cost vs the series S a non-issue entirely. If you don't want Game Pass, don't get it, the Series S is still a great deal. Not to mention the cost of buying like 3 games a year is the same as Game Pass, and you'll 100% end up spending more on games than the console itself regardless of the console cost?

It doesn't bother me at all, as long as they maintain the variety and frequency of additions they've been doing. Playing outriders atmidnight for no additional cost,plus removing the Gold paywall for ftp games, it's very much worth it. If it becomes sparse, just cancel for awhile, no contract here. I only pay for UHD content on netflix when I'm in the middle of a good looking show, then I downgrade again. People act as if they're stuck to their services when very few have actual contracts.

My "fear" is that the 1st party devs for MS/Gamepass will stop publishing (more or less) finished games and just keep posting stuff like State of Decay 2, Sea of Thieves or Grounded. Not to say those games aren't good or promising, more so where they'll just develop content for those games until interest vanes and/or dies, then leave them unfinished forevermore.

That fear aside, I do enjoy Gamepass and hope Microsoft eventually publishes a good and relatively finished game!

I’m not currently bothered by the strategy, but I do dislike it’s longer term implications, as all subscription-based models seem destined to increase in price until you are paying the same or more than you were in the first place just buying games or cable tv or whatever. The benefit of al la carte subscriptions was to cut the fat, but now that things are getting divided up, I don’t think the costs will remain as low as they have been. Netflix is now high enough cost that I cancelled the subscription, prime will likely increase at some point, games ass will probably soon require ultimate only instead of just pc or just Xbox, and then increase yearly from there. It’s similar tactics to drug dealers, cable internet companies and/or cigarette companies: offer low introductory prices to hook you, then gouge you for all you are worth after you come to think of them as a constant need.

In the words of Austin Walker: Fuck Capitalism.

There's two separate motives that drive my game playing.

The first is the particular games I super definitely want to play. I'll keep buying those as boxed products. But there's less and less of these as time goes on - last year the number of games I actually bought and enjoyed has never been lower. I find myself extremely disinterested in the latest and greatest; it's been over 6+ years since I had an E3 where I was interested in the majority of titles shown off.

The second is a little different. It's novelty. Chasing after playing something different, sorting through the titles, seeing how they run on my PC or Xbox, checking out the aesthetic and the latest gameplay gimmicks, and trying some super left field stuff. Sometimes this turns into games I actually really like and didn't expect (turns out Far Cry Primal was 100% my jam, as one random example, even if I dislike every other Far Cry game). But the bulk of the time, I just try it for 1-5 hours and move on.

At this point, for both purposes, owning the game in a concrete way gets less and less interesting to me over time. I'm totally behind game preservation, but purely in an abstract moral sense. For my actual gaming habits, subscriptions with the extremely rare boxed product purchases are making more and more sense.

As a middle ground between those two, I appreciate bundles on PC since I get to keep the game if it turns out to be a winner, and I feel no time pressure to try the game out. I got Yakuza games in Humble Monthly over the last few years but I only just got into the series recently, and it was nice to have them around.

Bother me? No. Will I ever get a subscription to Gamepass? No.