Game Pass was a mistake.
It’s almost like raising prices while reducing the offerings is a good way to lower the number of paying customers
But, but… Copilot for Xbox!
let ai play for you, for a small admin charge of 4.99 per attempt
That’s why I canceled!
I was getting $60 a year plans and then they started moving features to their “Ultimate” tier while making it four times the price.
Wtf? 4x? I, personally, find 60 already way too much for not owning a single fucking game. Also way too much for some casual gamers who play an hour a day or so at maximum. Which I assume are their target demographic.
I feel like $5 per month to rent a ton of games (if they are games you are interested in) is a damn good deal. Not sustainable, but a damn good deal. Heck we used to rent one game from blockbuster for $4 for like 5 days.
They didn’t understand the only reason people used it was because it was really cheap before they raised the prices. Most aren’t super hardcore and play games over a few months so it became cheaper to just buy games again. It’s stupid because they had no reason to try to make a sub model except that MBAs are morons and value recurring revenue more than just revenue in general
thats right, the average ‘gamer’ is casual. they’ll purchase a couple games per year and maybe a handful more on special.
gaming itself is a leisure activity so when other aspects of life starts getting expensive or free time is reduced then what gets dropped first is an overpriced subscription service.
Yeah they really forgot games are something I would buy on a whim during good times. Now? I’m not going to spend even $60 on a game, or a subscription, until well after any game as released to make sure it’s worth it. I’d much rather replay red dead or mass effect or Skyrim again then spend $60 on some lame boring corporate game
But if you give everyone a free trial you’ll have millions in “recurring revenue”, which you can tell your shareholders and inflate your share price.
It was great for trying out games you weren’t sure about. But I don’t wanna pay $30/month for that.
Yeah, if they made it like $10 per month and you could only rent 1 at a time that would be great. I would love a digital rental service to try out games.
That’s okay, Microsoft can just have Copilot subscribe 40 million times to pad out the numbers.
But they got RID of Features while RAISING Prices! That’s the EXACT Recipe for Success!
Spending 70 billion dollars for gamepass content never seemed like a viable strategy.
There’s also the issue that I don’t think there are enough customers that would trust Microsoft in a pure rental situation.
MS’s other money makers have all turned to complete trash. The only business strategy that MS understands is monopoly.
Ha ha!
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Why? As if steam and co aren’t bad enough in the sense of renting-not-owning. This is literal renting.
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No mods
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Microsoft is so untrustworthy. Why subscribe to something that is probably gone tomorrow. They half-assed or killed so many projects…
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Pressure…when will the game vanish that I just installed?
Games on Game Pass can be modded. Granted, it’s not as easy as something from Steam for the older games but saying they can’t is blatently false. Older games still require to take ownership of files but newer games give you full access. There’s a number of Forza Horizon 6 mods already and the Game Pass version is modded the exact same way as the Steam version, just open the folder and change the files.
Look I know it’s cool to hate on Microslop, but c’mon.
- People are largely fine with renting when they can rent a shit ton of stuff at the same time. This is Netflix for video games, and it’s actually done well (compared to whatever the fuck PS tries to do).
- Mods are niche. The type of person who buys a console already knows they aren’t going to get mods.
- Game Pass has a strong track record of giving plenty of advance notice for both additions and removals from service. And they offer discounts on all games that are about to go away.
- See #3. This is a made up strawman issue.
Microsoft is fucked from a business perspective, but Game Pass was a great idea and a great offering right up until they fucked themselves from a business perspective by buying Activision for an ocean of money.
There are also mods in some games on console, they just can’t use script extenders like PC modding often can.
Microsoft have already erased everyone’s library once before when they shut down the original Games for Windows store. They already have a track record of showing they’re perfectly willing to yank everyone’s licenses and shut everything down until they decide they actually they do want to be in the games space again.
Game Pass is already their second attempt at this, and there are a lot of people who don’t trust them not to rug pull again.
What rug pull? You pay a subscription and know exactly when they’re going to revoke your licenses.
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