navster15

@apewins: NBA 2K21 is on Game Pass, along with the latest Madden, FIFA, and NHL games. DMC, GTA/Red Dead, and Hitman have all been on the service in the past, with discounts as they were leaving to own them for cheap. As for Ubisoft and Call of Duty, I tired out on those franchises a decade ago, but sure, those are missing from the service.

But hey, if it doesn’t work for you that’s fine. But for “new” and “great” titles, the likes of Gears Tactics, Destiny Beyond Light, The Medium, and soon enough Outriders, are all examples of games that keep me subscribed.

Game Pass Ultimate has joined Spotify and Netflix as baseline costs in my monthly budget, although I’ll definitely grab the three month card discounts whenever they pop up. My gaming spend year on year has gone down significantly since I first signed up for GP back in 2017. It’s basically a no brainer for me, although admittedly a big part of that is me owning a Series X, One X, and PC, all of which I use regularly.

@haz_kaj: I guess if you need it to be said, here it is: it sucks that Sony doesn’t allow their games on other platforms. It also sucks that Microsoft and Nintendo do the same. It sucks in general that games are the only media that requires specific hardware from corporations to experience them. Capitalism sucks.

I cannot for the life of me understand anyone rooting for games to be accessible to less people. If Microsoft wants to do that, I suppose that’s their prerogative, but cheering on industry consolidation is so incredibly short sighted.

At this point it’s less of a technical issue than one of corporate priorities. It’s pretty clear even at this early juncture that the PS5 is going to outsell the Series X/S (which has been true every generation), so Sony isn’t going to spend money spinning up a team dedicated to backwards compatibility just to beat Microsoft in a niche that isn’t that big of a deal to the general public. Instead, Sony will happily point you towards stuff like PS Now as a replacement to true backwards compatibility.

I love the base switch, but it’s at best a mediocre form factor for handheld use. If you’re confident you are going to use it exclusively portably, then the switch lite is a no brainer.

This is going to kill what’s left of the endgame. If I’m partying up with friends and we all spent this extended period of time leveling up the same hero then we’re screwed because all the other heroes will be under leveled, and you can’t double up on heroes in a party. If anything, they should be making the climb to max level less onerous, not more.

@bigsocrates: I’m using PS Plus comparison to explain the scale of Stadia Pro in relation to Game Pass, I’m not writing a Sony diss track. Weird shade but whatever.

Look, the original content of my post was whether or not the recent reporting on Stadia had anything to do with the continued viability of Game Pass as a service, and none of what you wrote really refuted what I wrote. You seem to just want to pedantically point to stuff I omitted for the sake of writing a shorter comment as gotcha moments that unravel my underlying thesis. So far I’m not seeing it.

You bring up Microsoft losing money on the service, and I have to ask how that is relevant. Like you say, Microsoft shed billions to get Xbox off the ground, and for nearly 20 years I’ve been happy with the ecosystem. So if they’re losing money on Game Pass, why should I concern myself? If anything, that assures me as a subscriber that they’re in it for the long haul. Or if this is all just chin stroking and play acting as MBAs, I guess that’s just a less interesting conversation to me.

@bigsocrates: Here’s the difference between Game Pass and Stadia though; one is a subscription service that gets you a ton of games you want to play and more added each month, and the other a poor imitation of PS Plus while the actual games folks want to play are behind a $60 per pop paywall. There’s more inherent appeal in the former than the latter.

And what about the costs? Microsoft has clearly done the math on the service, seeing as it’s been around for four years, with an actual reasonable path to viability. Some analyst can throw out a number like 50 million subs to break even, but even if that’s true, it’s definitely a reasonable target for Microsoft. Last I checked they had 15 million subscriptions and had sold 50 million Xbox Ones. Is it out of the question that a resurgent Xbox drives Game Pass to success? Whatever they pay for a few months of Red Dead Redemption 2, perhaps the biggest traditional blockbuster of the last gen, is irrelevant. The service isn’t going to falter by occasionally forking over money for a get, that doesn’t hold up to any prior indication.

Not to mention, the service benefits the Xbox brand and ecosystem. There will be folks drawn to the All Access plan, for instance, and the value of that is driven strongly by including Game Pass. Or even people who occasionally use the service but choose an Xbox console or buy a Windows license to have the option, while still perhaps buying games the traditional way (and giving Microsoft a cut in the process).

And I’m not sure how I’m wrong about Game Pass being bolstered by Xbox? The big draw of the service is day and date access to Xbox Game Studios output, the largest library is only accessible on an Xbox console, and even the xCloud is powered by Xbox server blades. An independent, non-Microsoft equivalent is simply not comparable. I mean, you’re not wrong that GP also benefits from being on phones and PC, but that just supports my thesis that the service is in a much healthier place than Stadia. Good job using pedantry to tell me I’m right I suppose?

I don’t see how Stadia failure has anything to do with Game Pass’s viability. For one, GP is less reliant on streaming and more reliant on digital downloads, which are becoming more popular by the day. For another, it’s backed by the Xbox ecosystem, which despite all the braying online of being smaller that PlayStation, is still a 50 million strong user base that most third parties still consider a viable profit center. Maybe it fails, but subscription services clearly are going to be a player in the video game space, if only for the fact that folks are used to paying for all their other digital content in the same manner.