Summary

• Xbox Game Pass offers a vast game library, but recent price hikes have caused backlash among players.
• Microsoft's strategy of acquiring game studios and offering exclusive titles may be losing its appeal.
• I'll keep my subscription, but I'm not happy about it.

You might call 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Game Pass a loss leader, if Xbox 𒊎was leading anything. The idea is that Microsoft sells the service at a loss, in order to make more money off other elements of its service, presumably people buying games for their Xboxes that aren&rsqu𒁏o;t offered on the streaming service.

Companies used to do this with the consoles themselves. Analysts estimated that , meaning the company took a $300 loss on every piece of hardware sold. The markup on games was much greater, and that’s where con🥂sole manufacturers make their profits.

Game Pass is intended to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:entice yo𒉰u into Xbox’s ecosystem. Microsoft’s plan, until now, has been to pay exorbitant amounts of money to hoover up games studios in order to release their games exclusively on the platform. Or so we thought, until it announced that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Call of Duty would be cross-platform. And then that Xbox exclusives Sea of Thieves Grounded, and Hi-Fi Rush would release on other platfo♑rms.

Microsoft’s strategy has seemed increasingly confused in recent months. Offering its biggest games free of charge if you’re signed up to its monthly subscription would make sense if those games weren’t also offered elsewhere. If you had to buy an Xbox and a Game Pass sub to get the new Call of Duty, you could see where the profit🦂 margins would be. This becomes especially apparent when you consider that this strategy would hopefully tempt PlayStation players, who would have never needed to buy an Xbox console before, to buy an Xbox. If you’ve got an Xbox, Game Pass is a no-brainer.

The decision to make ಌCall of Duty cross-platform was probably forced out of Microsoft’s hands by the scrutiny and legal proceedings inܫvolved in the Activision Blizzard acquisition. Still, it seems like a fatal flaw in the strategy to offer $70 games for $10 a month with no other tangible benefit for your shareholders.

This week, Microsoft announced that it was raising the prices of Game Pass subscriptions, and removing some core benefits from the lo𝄹wer tiers. New users will be offered Xbox Game Pass Standard, replacing Xbox Game Pass for Console, which costs $14.99 a month and offers a chance to play the console’s extensive back catalogue for free. Crucially, it does not include new releases on day one, orꦯ cloud gaming.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is inꦰcreasing from $14.99 to $19.99, but the service remains otherwise unchanged. PC Game Pass rises from $9.99 perꦫ month to $11.99.

This went down as well as you might expect. My colleague Tessa Kaur has already committed to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:ne🗹ver taking out a Game Pass subscription again, and numerous players have echoe🤪d their sentimꩵents online. However, I’m keeping my subscription running.

I currently subscribe to Ultimate, the highest tier. I play Game Pass games on my Xbox Series X (currently Dragon Age: Inquisition, for my sins), and like to continue those save files on my PC. I enjoy cloud streaming, and dive into platformers like Ori and the Will of the Wisps on my phone regularly. Xbox’s cloud offering is an extremely 🐼underrated service, and removes the need to shell out for a Steam Deck while offering 💯just as much versatility for gaming on the go.

This means I also get every game on day one, which is important for work. I can jump into a game that I’m not particularly interested in if people want to read about it, I can grab a couple of screenshots to supplement others’ work, and I can find hidden gems that might have slipped under my radar if I had to shell out 30 quid for them, even as a work expense. Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn is the perfect example of this: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I enjoyed the demo, but the chance to play it for free (included in my subscription) means I’lꦕl definitely give the full game a go.

When I’m already 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:fighting through my 2024 backlog, Game Pass can be a blessing and a curse. But it’s hard to deny how much value I get from it. In the first half of this year I’ve played Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Harold Halibut, Hellblade 2, Fallout 4’s new update, Palworld, and countless more that I can’t remember. I’ve also got plenty of Game Pass games on my ‘to-play’ list, including Another Crab's Treasure, Still Wakes The Deep, and Flintlock, and even more due to be released in the coming months. Avowed is firmly on my radar. I’ll play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is the epitome of a game I probably wouldn’t spend $50 on but will definitely try out for nothing.

The price rises are a bad sign for Game Pass and, by extension,🌃 Xbox as a whole. It has gone from a tiny, forgettable cost in Microsoft’s footnotes to an arm of the company that spends billions of dollars on acquisitions. It needs to start earning that money back, and the easiest, laziest way to do that is by passing on those costs to the consumer🎐. These price rises are the direct result of Xbox’s studio-acquirement strategy, which has already seen entire companies close their doors and hundreds of developers laid off.

I’m not going to argue the price increase is a good thing, I’m not going to argue that Game Pass is ‘still worth it’ – that’s for you to decide based on your own use of the platform and any other factors. But for me, it’s too crucial to my gaming habits to give up. I’d prefer to pay a consistent $20 a month rather than save money in leanไer months only to have a massive outlay of hundreds of bucks because a ♔few triple-A releases hit all at once. I don’t have the luxury of choosing what not to play, and Game Pass is there to help me out. Plus, it means I can run through my back catalogue when there are fewer releases, as I’m doing right now.

Microsoft isn’t being very consumer-frien🍒dly right now, and it’s not being developer-friendly either. But it’s not hypocritical to point t𓃲hat out while maintaining your Game Pass sub.