this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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I mean, common issues surrounding subscription-based services and the lack of ownership of digital content aside, the full price of $10 a month (for the base rate, at least, I know they have some "Ultimate" package which combines the Xbox and PC programs) is actually a pretty good value on its own, given the size of the selection.
Even if you only play a few games per month on it, you're still getting pretty good value compared to buying those games individually. For example, once Starfield releases, you could play it for six months on Gamepass before buying it up-front would've been a better deal, and that's if you never play a single other game on the platform.
It's also nice to be able to try out games without having to commit to purchasing them. I've found a number of games through Gamepass that I've enjoyed which I never would have tried otherwise.
However, I have a strong suspicion that video game subscription services will end up following a similar trajectory to TV/movie streaming services at some point... Gamepass doesn't really have any major competitors, and has been priced very aggressively in order to build market share, and it reminds me a lot of Netflix in its early digital stages.
I think it's inevitable that other publishers are going to try and get in on the action, balkanizing the available content into too many services for consumers to care about, and diminishing the value of each service individually.
I also fully expect that MS will start driving up the base price of Gamepass at some point, once they feel like they have enough market penetration. The reduction of the $1 trial might already be a sign of that, but I'm hoping we'll still have some time before that happens. I might stay around at $15/month, but if it reaches $20 I'm probably out.
When it reaches $15/20 a month it'll already be too late.
It's the exact same model that ruined all the other entertainment industries.
Paying into subscription services now is a good deal for you, but it's gonna ruin everything just like it did everywhere else.
I think it's interesting that this isn't working as well in the pc world. Epic giving away games for free doesn't seem to be affecting sales numbers on steam (thinking of how incredibly well Baldurs Gate 3 is selling). I can't imagine Xbox games not on game pass are selling as well as they used to. I'm sure there's impacts I'm not seeing, but on the surface it looks less successful.
It's funny, my Steam games are like physical items out on my desk where I can see them every day, every time I turn on my computer. The free games I claim on Epic are like physical items in a drawer somewhere, that's the Epic Games client. Not quite sure what I have in that drawer until I open it and search through it.
Gamepass for pc already kind of sucks.
Pretty much every good new thing introduced these days inevitably goes to shit at some point, so I might as well enjoy it while it lasts.
Or, don't support the thing killing the industry. I was trying to point that out. That you're enjoying the good times now, but in doing so you're actively pushing the industry into the same hellhole that others became.
Even at Gamepass' highly aggressive price, it seems clear that it's not killing off one-time game purchases. Unlike how Netflix was able to destroy Blockbuster and greatly reduce the prevalence of physical media, Gamepass lacks any critical convenience advantage compared to its competition. Steam and other digital storefronts have already destroyed the market for physical game media, so Gamepass' competitive advantage can only extend to price and selection.
You're right in that game streaming services will probably implode on themselves as the model proves unsustainable in the presence of competitors, but I think the effect will be more localized than what's happening with TV and movie services. The available selection will likely never reach the immense size needed to seriously pose a threat to Steam before collapsing, so I expect a return to status quo to be much easier than with TV/movie streaming.
And at the end of the day, while I try to make my principled moral stands as a consumer where I can, life is too damn short and the ills of capitalism too all-encompassing for it to be worth it to me in this case. AAA gaming has been on a slow, gradual backslide long before Gamepass came into the picture, so it's not like the success or failure of game streaming is going to change its long-term prospects that much. Might as well save some money while I can.
There was literally a developer that wasn't bringing something out on xbox, it might have been dlc? their reasoning was that they didn't want to spend the time porting to xbox because no one buys content anymore on xbox.
so no
is not at all true, we have evidence to the opposite of that.
I think you are talking of Furi. The developers shared how many units were sold on which platforms (link to Vice article), which showed that Xbox just wasn't worth working on because it wouldn't recoup the costs. For reference, the game was already a few years old at that point and MS refused to put it on GamePass, which would've hurt the game's visibility even more.
Netflix pricing has always had a lot of pressure on it because the company has no product diversity. All Netflix offers is Netflix, so all of its revenue comes from there. Meanwhile, MS has Office as the world's default productivity suite, and it rakes in billions from corporate Windows licensing and cloud services. As of about a year ago, gaming was actually less than 10% of their annual revenue. So they can support narrow margins on Game Pass pretty much indefinitely. And they are motivated to do so as the heavy underdog to Sony, whose consoles consistently outsell theirs by a ratio of about 2:1.