How do you feel about Gamepass now?

[CriticalGaming]

Game Pass Is Now Officially A Revolving Door For Big Games

Three of the best Yakuza games join PowerWash Simulator on Microsoft's popular service

kotaku.com

Gamepass of late has seemed to run out of steam, updating with unexciting titles while other titles leave as Gamepass loses rights to have them on the platform. Right as Playstation's service updates with 100's of games available depending on how much you want to pay for the monthly service. Sony's service also seems to revolve around games and titles that they hold the rights too, so there is less (but no zero) risk of titles needing to be cycled out as they lose the ability to offer them.

Top that off with Sony allowing users to pay in tiers and pay less if they aren't interested in the games on offer there. Which Gamepass doesn't do outside of offering day 1 titles and titles across pc and xbox iirc.

So I guess the question for the forum is this. Now that Gamepass has been a thing for nearly two years now, do you guys still think it's a service worth being subbed too? If not how does Microsoft fix it?

And to be fair, how you ya'll feel about Sony's offering? Is it worth being a competitor to Gamepass?

 

[bluegate]

I still think that GamePass is a snake in the grass system for the gaming industry and it's not a future the industry should chase.

Microsoft is still pumping in more money than it's getting out in order to try and bind customers to its brand.

Fuck Microsoft. Fuck 'em.

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As for Sony's new offering; it's a fucking joke is what it is.

They should have kept PS Now and PS+ as separate entities, the new service is basically just both subscription services added together.

But with a paltry selection of PS1 games added and ... demos? What were they thinking, asking 120$ a year for this mess.

 

[BrawlMan]

Both services are ass, and I am sticking with regular PS+. I find Game Pass even less useful, because I already got the games I want to play on other consoles. Most of them physical.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

More like game…pass.

 

[sXeth]

I mean, the nail on the head is that Sony's still got the overall superior library of games it doesn't have to dish out the cash to keep on there. I don't think anyone would seriously dispute that. They will inevitably equalize out on the third party stuff and its right back to where MS has always struggled, which is keeping a good exclusive library.


And many of their recent acqisitions are, uh... questionable in logic. Mojang is only Minecraft, which while lucrative, will also tank like a rock if it becomes an exclusive (prettysure the bulk of minecraft players who actually pay into the skins and junk are on Switch and Mobile). Bethesda is discernably only lukewarm at best anymore (if you compare the press and community buzz on Starfield to Skyrim, its laughably minimal) after their series of rocky title after rocky title.


A lot of the rest are pretty niche offerings. You can lightnign in a bolt on a niche offering sometimes. But yeah, Obsidian is mostly catering to a CRPG of forgotten yore (idk, circa 2000-2005) nostalgia crew who pre-eminently buy their games, they don't get into the subscription model. Picking up some indie studios with one or two cult hits to their name seems more likely to hit a sophomore slump then anything beneficial to MS particularly.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Ok fine I'll be the pro-Gamepass guy...

I first subscribed to Gamepass for a few months in the winter, during which time I played and loved Pscyhonauts 2, Unpacking, Nobody Saves the World, and The Forgotten City. These are games I would never have actually bought because I have very narrow tastes in gaming. But they turned out to be so enjoyable.
I also got to try out a bit of Halo and Forza, games that I really am never into, and while that didn't change my mind, I liked that I got to try them out as part of my subscription.

Then I quit because I moved on to Sony exclusives and FromSoftware for a bit and those games are time commitments.
Now I'm done with that and I'm ready to hop back into the world of video game buffets (I will wait until I return from a trip I'm taking in a few weeks).
Some games I look forward to checking out: Tunic, Evil Within, Omari. I'm just curious about them, I don't know if I'll like them.

A subscription service gives me the freedom to quit a game without guilt. When I buy a game, I feel like I have to finish it. That's fine if I know I will dedicate the time and effort even if the game may be bloated or confoundingly annoying ahem Horizon Elden Ring.

Video game dabbling is also fun.

The writer of and, I guess, many readers of, the OP article is like- hey don't we all already own all these games? And like.. no, we all don't. Most of us don't. Some of us go long stretches without gaming and aren't on top of the industry. Some of us don't get into an entire genre of games until our 40's. Some of us wait until "everybody is talking about" something before we want to give it a shot because a video game can be a time or energy commitment and we got other stuff to do.

And all this stuff about Microsoft just wanting me into their system- sorry but they already had me in their system as data since the 1990's. I was hating on Microsoft back in the 90's. They're basically like Amazon- I used the services because avoiding it would make my life more difficult than what I'm willing to sacrifice even though I acknowledge they do great harm to this world. Yes we are living in a society etc.

 

[tippy2k2]

I feel the same way about Game Pass the last time this kind of thread came up so i'll copy/paste what I said then:

As someone who is One and Done kind of a gamer, I absolutely adore Game Pass. I've had it for years now and I have paid for like...two years worth still (basically I wait for Black Friday, load up on codes when they drop in price, and reload my account). Sure it sucks when games I want to play do leave but along with that, there are dozens of games that I would have likely never considered playing if not for Game Pass (Games like "Slay the Spire", "My Friend Pedro", and "Hollow Knight" being the best examples I imagine).

I don't ever keep games either so a service like GP is damn near perfect for me.

I love Game Pass and unless something drastic happens like a huge price jump or they somehow lose 90% of their games, I will keep Game Pass subbed to for a long time.