XBox Game Pass for PC - The Netflix of games (low price)

[S w a t s o n]

5 hours ago, Exprima said:

So as a Microsoft employee i was able to purchase 2 years of XBL Gold for $50, and with today's promo of $1 for Game Pass Ultimate my XBL Gold membership got upgraded for the entirety of its duration...

 

Basically I got Game Pass Ultimate for $51 and I don't even own an Xbox, sweet!

Did the same, quite a good deal

[The King of the Undead]

no linux no me

[Master Delta Chief]

8 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I hate the idea of games as a service. Games aren't like movies where it's absolutely identical on every run so you basically watch it once and forget about it. Where games can be entirely different experience for several runs. And if you like modding and simply prefer to actually own things, this just isn't it. But I can see it being popular among normies who treat games like I treat movies. They play them through once and forget about them. For them, this will be great as it would probably end up being cheaper.

I don't think this is a bad idea at all. If there are games out there that you only play so often or like play once indeed, this is a fairly good deal. If there's a game out there that I really like and may play more often, I'll buy it. As long as it doesn't become like some sort of exclusivity thing in where games are only available for subscription.

[Shreyas1]

If you use Microsoft rewards and do all the quizzes and stuff you could probably get this all for free 

[williamcll]

I wonder will there be humble bundle discounts for this.

[Fasterthannothing]

Crazy deal going on for it bought 2 years of gold and the game pass for $1 great price for 2 years of it. I almost went for 3 years of gold since 36 months is the max they will give you of that deal but figured in 2 years the whole streaming game landscape would change a lot.

[Brooksie359]

14 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Hmm. Now this is basically admitting nobody is ready for the latency involved (And yes, this is were we are at Google: you have to convince us this is ready against all odds) in direct game streaming and I'm inclined to agree. I am a tad concerned about a couple details

 

1) Constant re-downloads: Let's face it for most modern games you want and SSD. TB SSDs are pretty reasonable priced right now however that's potentially just 10 games. The point of the service seems to be equal to Netflix on this regard: make you think you can game a lot but betting on you playing 5 to 10 different games per month otherwise a not-insignificant amount of time will be spend on downloads and ssd upkeep deleting games, even on a TB SSD

 

2) No control (which mainly means no mods): My guess is that this will be pretty locked down so you can forget about modding. This is not insignificant btw: Companies like Bethesda seem to forget that some of their success is due to modders making up for their laughable quality control and lack of quality content.

 

3) Appealing to lowest common denominator: This is also kind of a no brainer: I am assuming that non first party titles might have a licensing agreement. One that unlike Steam, can be revoked at any time in case somebody like say, Epic, offers a better deal (They'll be ready with a competitor fairly soon) so it means it will become a war of exclusivity nonsense (Again just like TV/Movie streaming services) and who's got the hottest games right now and the catalog of smaller games might suffer and make your experience rather inconsistent: "Ooops, that nice RPG you were advancing through just got removed from the store and your copy locked into nothingness, lol fuck you: go play FIFA kid, exlusive on Xbox Game Pass!!"

The chances of epic games stealing away games from Microsofts catalog for game pass is pretty slim tbh. You have to remember that Microsoft is a large company that epic wouldn't want to piss off especially because Microsoft could simply threaten to remove their games from the xbox platform. Also if you didn't notice they announced that you will get metro exodus with the PC game pass which is supposed to be an epic exclusive. 

[Blze001]

15 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

somebody like say, Epic, offers a better deal (They'll be ready with a competitor fairly soon) 

Considering they can't keep their own monthly goals with their storefront, eh....

[Misanthrope]

1 hour ago, Blze001 said:

Considering they can't keep their own monthly goals with their storefront, eh....

Ok so maybe not Epic but somebody else with bank will try the same stuff: it was just a matter of time and quite frankly I'm surprised it took this long for PC exclusivity platforms to become a thing.

But yeah probably not out of the gate then.

[killertek78]

18 hours ago, S w a t s o n said:

Nope, I have it on PC via game pass, played a few hours last night. Make sure you install the beta Xbox App

Huh, I also have beta, still says only available one my Xbone..

[S w a t s o n]

5 hours ago, killertek78 said:

Huh, I also have beta, still says only available one my Xbone..

The beta xbox app? Just search metro exodus

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-beta/9mv0b5hzvk9z

[Radioactive Snowman]

On 6/10/2019 at 2:55 AM, System32.exe said:

It's a pretty good deal.. but dear god, their launcher for this is awwwwwwful.

Its still in beta

[Radioactive Snowman]

On 6/10/2019 at 4:26 AM, killertek78 said:

Metro Exodus is Xbone only as of now with this 'service' so booo. Only game currently out I'd pay the $1 to play, maaaybe Forza Horizon 4.

no its not, im downloading it right now

[Chett_Manly]

Anyone else feel like Microsoft is an idiot for doing this. Where before I'd buy Gears on sale for like $30 now I am going to pay $10 to play it at launch. The same for the next Halo game. And every other first party game they make that I am interested in. They'd be lucky to get $100 off me in the next 5 years at that rate.

 

While Sony will get $120 off Spiderman 2 and Last of Us 2 alone.

 

Wheres the math in it?

[TechyBen]

11 minutes ago, Chett_Manly said:

Anyone else feel like Microsoft is an idiot for doing this. Where before I'd buy Gears on sale for like $30 now I am going to pay $10 to play it at launch. The same for the next Halo game. And every other first party game they make that I am interested in. They'd be lucky to get $100 off me in the next 5 years at that rate.

 

While Sony will get $120 off Spiderman 2 and Last of Us 2 alone.

 

Wheres the math in it?

Not really. That $30 is a higher barrier of entry than $10. That $30 is a one off, the $10 is possibly perpetual. There is a TON of money in that. Sky did not get rich selling DVDs.

[Radioactive Snowman]

13 minutes ago, Chett_Manly said:

Anyone else feel like Microsoft is an idiot for doing this. Where before I'd buy Gears on sale for like $30 now I am going to pay $10 to play it at launch. The same for the next Halo game. And every other first party game they make that I am interested in. They'd be lucky to get $100 off me in the next 5 years at that rate.

 

While Sony will get $120 off Spiderman 2 and Last of Us 2 alone.

 

Wheres the math in it?

How many more people will be willing to spend 10 than to spend 60? Then how many of those people will enjoy using gamepass and keep their subscription in the months where there are no new releases? There is a ton of money in these services and theres a reason more of them are starting to pop up around the place

[illegalwater]

On 6/11/2019 at 6:55 AM, Radioactive Snowman said:

Its still in beta

That's not an excuse for the issues I'm having. The app is incredibly slow, and half the games I try to download throw up errors.

 

Error code: 0x80070005

Error code: 0x00000001

 

This feels more like an alpha.

[suicidalfranco]

14 minutes ago, Chett_Manly said:

Anyone else feel like Microsoft is an idiot for doing this. Where before I'd buy Gears on sale for like $30 now I am going to pay $10 to play it at launch. The same for the next Halo game. And every other first party game they make that I am interested in. They'd be lucky to get $100 off me in the next 5 years at that rate.

 

While Sony will get $120 off Spiderman 2 and Last of Us 2 alone.

 

Wheres the math in it?

The math is on the people who will just turn on the subscription and never turn it off, potentially getting 120$ out of each user per year.

 

Plus it's easier to convince someone to spend 10$ every month than convince them to spend 60$ once.

 

[killertek78]

8 hours ago, S w a t s o n said:

The beta xbox app? Just search metro exodus

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-beta/9mv0b5hzvk9z

Had to do a system reboot, weird. It's there now.

[Misanthrope]

6 hours ago, Johners said:

Game downloads have been a thing for a while for though. Sure, you can get 2-4 TB SSDs or large mechanical drives to store your games but there's a high price tag to those and if you opt for a mechanical drive, slower loading times. Game developers opting to make games which require more storage isn't a bad thing, as it allows for larger and more varied games in all aspects. In the console world, I think it works out an average of six games per console sold so a 1TB SSD holds all of games those, even if they're all 100+ GB like Red Dead Redemption 2 currently is.

 

You don't actually own the games when subscribing to Xbox Game Pass and it's pretty obvious what you're getting, access to games on a subscription. Chances are most of the people subscribing to this service just want to play the game and uninstall it when they're done. I'd probably do the same if this was a service that appealed to me. I used to mod games a lot, and there's a few older games which have required mods for them to work nicely on modern systems (widescreen fixes and such), but beyond that I just don't care for it anymore and I don't think the target audience for Xbox Game Pass does either.

 

I don't how appealing to the lowest common denominator is bad and it's something console gaming has always done to be honest. Outside of a full streaming service in which you don't even need to buy a console, a £200 Xbox One S and Xbox Game Pass subscription is a very accessible mechanism for playing and enjoying video games casually. Combine that with the used games market and the lowest common denominator have a field day without spending too much money. As for games going away, this is also an issue for Netflix or Apple Music, licensing agreements can end or change and due to this, content will come and go from time-to-time. If you want to ensure you retain access to something, then you should buy the game and as far as I'm aware, having an active Xbox Game Pass subscription means you can buy any game currently available on that service with a discount.

Couple points to respond to (Consider anything not directly addressed sufficiently conceded on my part btw):

 

1) Small comment: we've seen time and time again that space doesn't necessarily means better texture quality. It apparently just takes more time from artists to do proper textures that compress well but I am afraid I am not familiar enough with image and texture stuff to comment further other than it is commonplace to see modders match and surpass developer textures for a fraction of the on-drive space with just enough time/resources/whatever-it-is to properly work. Ballooning install sizes just seem to be the cheapest and quickest way to get better textures in not the best option technologically but more of a matter of "They got the hdd space and the bandwidth now, let's just use it"

 

2) Lowest common denominator thing is a bit counter intuitive: Yes console aim to sell to the most people and the most popular games but there's a good reason why all 3 Console manufacturers have at various times, focused on niche projects and even indie games quite heavily. You might not get a lot of sales out of "Pretentious and artsy Walking Simulator 2019" being on your console but you know what you do get? A bunch of hipsters at Kotaku or Vox or whatever writing articles about the newest quirky small game that happens to be available on your console.

 

Shit like that doesn't contributes to sales directly, not one bit. There's just very few people that actually put money down for those games and play em religiously. But whenever you can get a lot of high profile people talking about your console without you paying them for endorsement or advertisement (Which honestly isn't a way to reach the hipster crowd anyway: they're are savvy enough to see through that) you're still getting eyeballs on your product and ecosystem and a bunch of free publicity and "engagement" on social media and so on and so forth.

This is why you want to at least appear to have a very wide variety of choice available on your platform even if 90% of your net profits come from Fifa, Fortnite and Battlefield and that's it.

[Dietrichw]

This is a great deal for college students who don’t have time to play during the semester. Pay for the subscription during the summer and get caught up on the games that are available, cancel before the fall semester starts.

[Bravo1cc]

Ive been using it and i think its flipping fantastic, bring it on i say.

[Shogunluffy_1982]

I got it but when I try the benchmark on forza horizon 4 crashes must be just that game?

[TekSupport]

Hasn't the xbox game pass been out for the past year at least.

I have played sea of thieves like 8 months ago on this pass.

[Shogunluffy_1982]

3 minutes ago, TekSupport said:

Hasn't the xbox game pass been out for the past year at least.

I have played sea of thieves like 8 months ago on this pass.

don't know just got it..