I know this is going to backfire: gamepass is convenient but every person subscribing fuels the toxic „rentseeking culture“ of capitalists worldwide. Some would say that its much better to pirate than to use this shit. Besides: it is technologically subpar and surely privacy invasive.
I mean, I’ll bite: I enjoyed GP for a while, up until MS went firing-crazy and upped their prices.
Until then, I was very aware I rented games and might not get to play them later. Given that I was generally playing games that were new or sampling genres I don’t play much of, I wasn’t opposed to the time limitation, and the low price was reasonable.
Now that their price increased, I ended it. I am not locked into their ecosystem, and in fact swore off it pretty easily due to their changing circumstances.
I would agree the renting situation is poisonous when it comes to housing, because the model has driven the purchasing price of homes through the sky. But that is a situation with scarcity of goods. You can get video games anywhere.
I would agree if there wasnt a giant hole in your reasoning.
Once you stopped paying, „your“ library evaporated. It isnt that you rent out individual games. You have whole libraries built just from that.
And please dont go into the „gamers responsibility“. Thats an ableist view. Lots of gamers are underage and/or unable to make basic decisions especially against dark patterns and social pressure. Education and laws to limit exposure to this toxic stuff needs to happen, period.
That set of games in my library evaporated. I still have plenty of other games.
I’ll admit, if GP was someone’s entry into gaming and they never buy individual games, they would be a bit starved on unsubscribing except for any F2P games (which, tbf, is still a big set of options). But someone only able to spend that much a month on games is not going to have many options anyway; they’re the type that might buy a Ubisoft open world game just to get hundreds of hours through the year for their money.
But you’re also missing that this is very much the agreement and expectation: It is literally over a hundred video games, given the instant you pay them $15 (now I think $20) It is very fully understood to be on rental basis.
Gaming industry today is 90% gambling addiction: chests, gaming pass, achievements, competition, etc…Most “hardcore gamers” are stupid casual-competitive toxic players, or wannabe twitchers, without a real artistic culture. Glad we have indie devs and many real passionate people supporting these.
I can’t be the only one that has had issues with game pass, can I? I’ve tried it 3 separate times for 2-3 months each on three different PCs, and every time I’ve had different issues.
The windows client has been buggy. Sometimes clicking things just… doesn’t work. The pathing for save files is done in such a way that you can’t transfer them from PC to PC. Some games just straight up not working. The list went on for me. I figured I’d keep giving it another try on a new system, but not anymore.
I’ve read some people have absolutely zero issues after years of using it. I wonder why the experiences vary so highly from user to user. Game Pass was an interesting service, but a horrible experience for me.
I’ve had issues as well with installing games. The worst thing about Game Pass is that the games are installed deep in your file system that you can’t access normally. You have to fight with the file manager and mess with ownerships just to copy your save file…
The Microsoft store is broken. I haven’t had issues with Gamepass specifically but I have had issues with the Microsoft store, so buggy that the only fix to download a game was to reinstall Windows. Happened to my desktop and laptop the same.
I used it a lot like 5 years ago when they basically gave it away for $1 a month and then gave you additional months sometimes for $3 if you stayed. I even found a really old Xbox gamepass 1 year card from like 2004, which I got for xmas from an aunt who thought I had an Xbox. My mind was blown when it worked, and then they let you convert that old service into gamepass months for a bit. Anyway, it worked great, no issues at all. The one issue I ended up having was around space, I think. I wanna say it was something weird, like if you deleted the game from the client and it still kept the files. You had to do extra things to make sure they deleted because the files were also kept in the same location as the windows store files, which is a super odd place if you ever seen it.
Black Ops 6 and Indiana Jones released in this measured quarter. Mainly COD pulling these numbers up.
30% is huge though. I think with game pass, keeping those subscribers means adding more high quality games at a good cadence. Doom the dark ages, Avowed, Fable releasing this year might be a part of this strategy.
I don’t think Fable is releasing this year, they’ve still shown barely anything and it was missing entirely from their recent developer direct of high profile 2025 games.
Games have short marketing cycles these days, so it’s not much of an indicator for when it’s due to release. Perfect Dark wasn’t there either, and I think both are allegedly slated for this year.
This year is already looking crazy good. Citizen Sleeper 2, the surprise drop of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, Ninja Gaiden 4 day one, O.G. Diablo… The hits just keep coming.
I had a game pass sub a couple of years ago and quit it because the games that I wanted to play quickly ran out. I had a sub for a month until a few days ago and I must say game pass is in a way better place than it used to be.
Nine Sols, Kunitsu Gami, Cocoon, Chants of Senaar and black ops 6 campaign were all unexpectedly good experiences.
Just asking why for the vsync? I got a new PC last fall and have only used freesync going forward. I wasn’t aware there was still a reason to vsync ever again if you had the option to do so.
Ahhh, my bad. I figured you were talking about freesync (AMD) or g-sync (Nvidea) options, which allows you to get the benefit of vsync without using as many resources to power it. Your monitor and gpu have to support it before it can be enabled. I was like, how is this bad haha!?
No you’re good. I never used the vsync before because I felt like it always made my movements too slow but now with a better graphics card and a better monitor it’s super smooth and accurate and I really like it
I upgraded from a 1070 and a 1080p basic monitor. I now have dual 1440p asus IPS monitors and the 3070, so huge upgrade, about a decades worth of technology
Well with the PS5 having double the storage bandwidth, we’ll see slightly less loading. Enter ship, loading screen. Land on planet, loading screen, etc.
Blundering around completely lost resulted in some of my best times playing Skyrim, it was a real bummer Starfield didn’t have that kind of experience.
I’d be really happy to play some Xbox exclusives on my ps5! I don’t see any downside to it as long as Sony still has some competition on the console market.
If the studios are profitable, it was still a good business decision. A bad business decision would be to tank a profitable studio to prop up a struggling hardware platform.
Besides, exclusives are mostly bad for the players, so if companies decide that supporting multiple platforms is the best strategy for them, it’s also better for us.
Nobody is winning here long-term. Microsoft is growing its subscription service and every step is with that in mind. Getting people to buy their games now, like Starfield, is likely seen as closing the gap a little more towards encouraging that.
Like all of these things, it will be great and a value at first and then a squeeze for more money with less offerings. People en masse will say they won’t be a part of it, and then record profits (like Netflix right now) will be shown.
Not all is doom and gloom though. Indie games are rapid fire releasing, Linux is growing due to Valve and Chromebooks, and I found a ten dollar bill in my pocket this morning.
I’m mostly frustrated with always online games. They remain the enemy for longevity and nonsense outside of the MMO space.
Gamepass has already hiked their prices up, and is severely hampered on PC by offering “Xbox” versions of games that are often older builds with more bugs, fewer features, and if they’re multiplayer games, don’t allow you to play with friends on Steam.
Years after all the Gamepass hype and I still fail to see how Gamepass is really that much of a value. The only really defining characteristic of it is the day 1 releases, but more often than not those late disappointing on their own.
If you’re pirating everything and want to play online then gamepass is your choice because trendy games switch so fast and buying new one every time is troublesome so you’re buying gamepass and have access to most of them in one go
It didn't end up being the system seller quality game they might have wished for, so why not get some more sales out of it. Nobody is gonna base their choice between Series X or PS5 on Starfield, but a lot of PS5 owners would indulge in purchasing the game out of curiosity. The maths make sense.
The problem is, you can extend this sentiment to most if not all of the XBox console exclusives that have been released for a good while now. They have unfortunately failed at producing a killer app for far too long at this point. Ever since Mattrick killed the momentum of the brand, they have never been able to recover it.
As much as I don't want a future in which PS5 is uncontested in the console space (Nintendo is too much its own thing to count as direct competition imo), it is starting to look like, from all angles, it just makes sense for Microsoft to focus on expanding Gamepass and their games as much as possible across all platforms because there's more money in that than in salvaging the XBox hardware brand.
At this point it's not even just about it being too expensive for an upstart, it's about being too expensive, too hard, and not at all worth the risk/reward proposition for anyone.
Microsoft is the largest public company in the world and they failed at it! Coming from two successful previous generations of products! Getting in in the market as an unproven entity at this point would be suicidal. Not to speak of the fact that the requirements to enter as a player in the market today are 10x more than when Microsoft entered the market with the XBox. When they unveiled the XBox, a half-decent network infrastructure for gaming was revolutionary; nowadays, an almost-perfect infrastructure with a good digital store is a minimum requirement.
Quite ironically, many of the players that could plausibly throw their name in the hat already have their fingers in gaming in other ways that don't exactly align with launching a domestic console. Apple is currently pushing for more ports of current AAA games to iOS and Mac; Facebook (I refuse to acknowledge their rebrand) is pushing Quest as its main platform and I imagine a traditional console would clash with that; NVIDIA provides hardware for Nintendo, sells gaming hardware for PC and a cloud gaming service, and I guess a console kinda clashes with all of that; Amazon seemed more interested in becoming a publisher than anything else when it comes to gaming; Alphabet probably still has PTSD from the whole Stadia fiasco...
Like, I don't know, I don't see a fuck you-tier company that could plausibly pull it off and at the same time would be interested in it. Tencent maybe? It's not looking good, honestly.
Stadia was such a funny story, imo. Nobody thought it would last given Google’s track record of killing products. Then to try to get into the gaming industry, an industry notoriously impossible to break into… And lo and behold, they failed and killed Stadia.
The fact that the one thing about Stadia constantly pratted by the press and public was “When will Google kill it?” impacted its growth profoundly. Google’s culture killed the Stadia, not the lack of investment. And as a company, they are in bad shape product and leadership wise.
If they made it gamepass netflix like then it might have taken off, but they required to buy games that you don’t own, even now it causes outrage and back in the day? They was delusional with that idea that you don’t own what your buy
Valve, that’s who would get in on the market. They already made a killing with the steam deck and there have been talks of a dedicated steam console again, like they have prototypes of consoles in their offices. I’m not talking about another steam machine scenario either, I’m talking dedicated valve designed hardware like the index and deck. They have the storefront and the network architecture to support the hardware. I’m already using my deck as a switch replacement and a console plugged into my TV with a USB-C hub.
You know what, you might be right, a second attempt at the concept of a Steam Machine, but this time done in a way that, you know, actually makes sense, with a single super-official SKU, with a lot of abstraction from the "PC" part of it (which Steam Deck has already set the field for) could potentially work.
But they did it so, so fucking badly last time, that I won't believe it until I see it.
Steam deck already successful, they just need to make steam deck but stationary and few times more powerful which next gen amd apus already providing, quite simple mission, and yes, you can flash Linux on mini pc with AMD hardware and have it, hovewer, why people who buy consoles not buying pc in the first place?, because console works out of the box, so valve can aim in that spot
Yeah, at the very least it would result in a brutal deterioration of the value proposition of future Playstation hardware. The harsh truth is that a large majority of Playstation players would not consider moving to PC or Switch 2 as a viable alternative, and Sony knows that, and would price accordingly. We all saw what happened the last time they felt they were uncontested in the market when they unveiled the PS3 and its pricing, but this time there would not be a 360 to punish them for it.
There is not a world in which a hypothetical PS6 isn't at least 599 ( without the hardware to make up for it) if it doesn't have a direct competitor. And that would have its own domino effect on Switch and PC hardware pricing... what are you gonna do, go to the overpriced PS6? Pleaaaaase.
Honestly, I'm curious to see if this rumor turns out to be true. If it does then I'm not really sure what that means for Xbox in the long-term. Putting just Starfield out on PS5 is one thing, but it sounds like they are thinking of putting most if not all of their first-party games on other platforms. If you're releasing your first-party games on other consoles then what exactly is the point of the Xbox? Is it just going to become a Game Pass box or are they planning on pulling out of the hardware business entirely like Sega?
I think it’s fair to see the Xbox as a Game Pass box in the short to mid-term, yes. Microsoft’s efforts have been focused on getting everyone on Game Pass, be it Xbox, PC or Mobile (and they would love for other console manufacturers to have it as well).
They are selling Xbox consoles at a loss and are only recouping money on games and Game Pass subscriptions, now that neither Nintendo nor Sony is onboard with bringing the latter to their ecosystem, might as well port their first-party games to competing platforms to make more money.
I think that’s the plan. Rumour is that Microsoft want out of the console hardware business. They want to just be a game producer and subscription platform. They want gamepass on PlayStation and Nintendo and, well everywhere and then they can stop making consoles.
Who knows if that’s even possible though. It seems like hell would freeze over before Sony and Nintendo let gamepass on their platforms but, stranger things have happened.
I mean, Sony AND Microsoft started to do exclusivity only temporary, first year or few it’s exclusive and after that they both double dip to make some more money
This move makes me believe the rumors of them wanting out of the console buriness are true. May be bad for consumers initially, but at the end of the day, it's just a glorified PC at this point with better optimization from the developers. I'm not too worried for the future
xboxera.com
Aktywne