I subscribed for a year or so, other than the horrible client it was good. But there are just too many games to play and not enough time, a good problem to have but still. I also felt like I didn't appreciate the games as much when I got them for "free."

I started getting it for $1 per month by canceling and then resubscribing, now you can't do that and I just don't bother to subscribe at all.

Now with just 14 days for a $1 trial it's an even worse deal. This is why I don't think MS should be allowed to buy up all these game companies. Try contacting MS for support. If you can't get through to someone in less than 10 minutes then they shouldn't be buying any more companies. That should be the test for any company acquiring other companies. If they can't serve the customers they have, how are more customers going to help?

[–] jedibob5 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] echo64 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

Offer a subscription for next to nothing, funded by vc money/microsoft infinite money buckrts. The industry doesn't mind because people are still buying things on cd/dvd/bluray so it's just extra money for them.
Oh no, everyone now just subscribes to the super cheap subscription, and the industry can't afford to produce content just for spotify/netflix/gamepass
Every content owner pulls content from the incumbent subscription service, starts their own, and you can't buy the content for money anymore.
Turns out $15 a month isn't enough to pay for everything the industry usually makes, content lowers in quality, prices go up. Everyone loses.

Paying into subscription services now is a good deal for you, but it's gonna ruin everything just like it did everywhere else.

[–] pavlov 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] jedibob5 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] echo64 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] jedibob5 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] echo64 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

Even at Gamepass’ highly aggressive price, it seems clear that it’s not killing off one-time game purchases.

is not at all true, we have evidence to the opposite of that.

[–] Aielman15 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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.

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.

[–] mvmnts 2 points 1 year ago

This is similar to my experience. A few games came and went that I was interested in but not a single must have and I don’t think I ever did more than install a game and try it for 20min and then lose interest. I would just keep signing up over and over for $1 and sometimes when I’d cancel they would even refund me my $1. It was a bizarre system. I don’t even honestly think I was abusing it either be because I got about a dollars worth out of it every month.

[–] Katana314 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes horrible Microsoft. Giving access to all these games and then stealing that away from the poor helpless consumers, instead charging money for them.

If you were paying $0-$1 for game pass, you were not a game pass customer, and it’s not worth their time to provide you dedicated phone customer support.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

$1 is better than $0, but can't tell that to CEOS and stockholders.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So we can expect the average player to need around 3 weeks to complete Starfield, then.

[–] sturmblast 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

lol, no doubt on that

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

and the benefits keep dwindling like every subscription service.

Everyone at the beginning told me I was stupid for not blindly going for it, that it's worth it! You get all these games for so little!

But I've been on this ride before with Netflix and all the other ones. Sure, the beginning is grand, they have everything you want at an impossibly low rate. They have sweet trials, good content, good prices, and it goes on for so long. Then all of a sudden you see reports of the libraries shrinking, costs are creeping up, those trials shrink, limitations are placed on how you use it. That favorite show/game you played is no longer allowed because of licensing issues, or it wasn't popular enough. To keep watching the show you love you have to pay more a month.

Personally, I hope everyone who is doing it has fun, but I'm burned out on subscriptions. I like the term subscription fatigue. I'll gladly pay to own my games.

[–] Katana314 6 points 1 year ago

It still could have been a good deal to subscribe while it was cheaper. No one would’ve stopped you from unsubscribing when the deal becomes less favorable. Honestly, same with early Netflix or every growing streaming service.

[–] jedibob5 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm subscribed for now because the value is still really good, but yeah, I'm fully expecting the other shoe to drop and MS to start jacking up the price once they decide they actually start needing to make money on it. I'm also willing to bet that we're also going to see a bunch of copycat services that will split up the available content behind 15 different paywalls and diluting the value to the consumer for each of them.

I honestly don't know why all these tech companies keep trying this whole strategy of pricing at near or outright losses to build market share before raising prices and reducing quality in an attempt to transition to profitability. Almost every time it ends up pissing off customers and driving them away, at which point you have a crappy, overpriced service that still doesn't make any money.

[–] Epicurus0319 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Their discless gaming consoles that rely entirely on subscriptions like this were a lousy idea, streaming works for movies but not for console games. Nowadays digital console media takes up so much storage space, my 1TB discless xbox one can only ever have 10 games installed at any given time. And that’s not considering the updates that take literal hours being released every other day at this point. If those green discs ain’t broke then don’t fix them. I can’t wait to save up for a switch, that’s where all the fun games are anyway

[–] MKBandit 3 points 1 year ago

You don't have to stream gamepass games. And I would rather not have more useless ewaste. Games are too big for discs anyway

[–] Katana314 3 points 1 year ago

The Series S doesn’t primarily stream games - it plays them locally. Not sure why you’re ranting about that.

Funny enough, maybe it’s just that I play a bunch of indie games and fewer AAA live service masterpieces, but I’m able to fit well over 10 games just on my unupgraded Series S drive.

I do also own a bunch of games digitally on there - and even if I stop playing Game Pass, I have access to those.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Can you still do external hard drives? It's a bit slower but for less used or older games I move them to my external

[–] JoeKrogan 0 points 1 year ago

Greed is alive and well