RetroFed
Game Pass Was Supposed To Save Xbox – Instead, It’s Killing the Company
Mereohttps://www.ign.com/articles/game-pass-was-supposed-to-save-xbox-instead-its-killing-the-company
“Netflix for games” has proven to be far from the ideal solution.
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People are tired of subscriptions
glowie
TeaWithDaniThere’s some kind of threshold of # of subscriptions and $ of subscription people are willing to be tolerant of.
Like most people were ok with Netflix/Prime when they were the only two in town and it cost like $20-$25 for both.
Now there’s how many different streaming services? You don’t even have an easy way to know which provider has what anymore either.
Microsoft currently sells 4 different passes… and I have no idea whatsoever which gives me what… And the prices range from $14 to $25 CAD, which is the upper limit of what people want to pay in total subscription cost alone.
People get games with Netflix and Prime on top of their existing subscription and I’m sure most people don’t play or even know about them. lol
Unfortunately, the easiest way to know what is on what service is piracy. All in one app. Zero day releases.
There is a way to find who has what. I’m using JustWatch to find which movie or show is being streamed on which service. There’s a website and an app.
youmaynotknowGamePass is killing Microsoft? I don’t think so. And Xbox is not a company. The company that own Xbox is Microsoft.
jsnfwlrXbox has its own CEO, it is its own company, wholly owned by Microsoft. Xbox then also owns other companies like Mojang, Zenimax Media, Activision Blizzard .. They own companies too… Its companies all the way down. This way if one fails, it’s bankruptcy doesn’t take down the whole chain.
it is its own company,
No that was exactly the point, Xbox is NOT its own company, it is a division within Microsoft. Something you could have easily looked up before posting false information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_(division)
formerly Microsoft Gaming, is the video game and digital entertainment division of Microsoft,
I can’t be the only one who actively tries to reduce the number of subscriptions I have. It’s terrible for the monthly budget. Gamepass lasted only a few months for me before I decided that I didn’t get sufficient value out of it. Something about paying monthly to retain access to a game that I can otherwise buy rubbed me the wrong way.
paorzzI was subscribed to them for months and forgot about it, but then they tried to charge me like $30 and all of a sudden, I remembered my password, and told them metaphorically where they can fuck off by unsubscribing myself permanently.
They would have gotten more from me had they not been greedy.
Snapz…It’sKilling the Company
Wow, so Microsoft has zero profit this year, huh? How the mighty have fallen.
I’m actually really surprised this didn’t work. They had acquired such a large amount of quality studios, IPs and a huge back catalogue. They had enough money to keep the subscription low indefinitely. Getting added to the Game Pass was a huge deal for indie devs at one point, but I think those who did were disapointed with returns.
Granted the article says they dropped 300 million on Jedi Survivor and Suicide Squad… which gets to the point of how unsustainable subscription models are. It’s like a smaller version of the Ai market. Just like how you can’t break even on 300 million selling a $10 a month subscription, you can’t break even on $30 billion investments with the same $10 subscription.
Still, how could you possibly mess this up. lol
It was great when I first got it, but I ended but getting fatigued with it. New releases wanted time investment, but the rising costs meant I felt I should play more stuff. In the end everything I wanted to play required time and I felt that I was no longer getting value out of it. It would have cost less to not have it and just buy the game for some titles.
I think that’s how it went down for most people.
I remember getting free games with Gold back on the 360 and One. Eventually they became unplayable without the subscription. Kinda enshitified.
There’s just something about your progression being tied to a subscription that makes you want to invest less in the game.
Welp, one way to screw up is to buy shitloads of studios, then do absolutely nothing with them.
It is utter insanity that they have owned Bethesda this long, released two seasons of Fallout on TV, and have given fans NOTHING on the game front.
Fallout 76 does not count for 95% of the fan base.
Microsoft and Xbox have been more stupid that just about any company I can think of.
BananaIsABerryStarfield was so unimpactful this guy forgot it even existed.
That starfield was the only project Bethesda had going at all is absolute corporate malpractice
It was never going to work out in favor of consumers.
Also fuck Microsoft. At the very least they should be broken up.
Gamepass never made sense to me as a product. Games make most their sales money in the first few months, but MS gave them away as day 1 additions. Games are heavily monetized with dlc, but a rotating catalog makes buying any less desirable since you could lose access unless you bought the game as well. The subscription seemed to push sales at you, but that’s a turn off for consumers. The used game market was still a thing, a 6 month subscription is less value than spending the same on a handful of games to keep permanently.
I’m not sure how it could succeed unless they stopped selling games at all for Xbox, which would probably kill it faster.
Eternal192Gates is a pedo, Microsoft is a shitty company and i don’t own an Xbox so go ahead and fucking die!
Lmao not defending gates, but he’s been minimally involved in MS since I think ~2003 when Ballmer took over.
Make no mistake he is an evil man. It’s just that he excelled at actively painting himself in a good light after he left.
Imagine saying “Hitler has been minimally involved with the Nazis since…” like it’s a good thing.
Microslop was still founded by a pedo who banged presumably underage Russian prostitutes from Jeffrey Epstein, caught an STD, and then tried to covertly slip medications to his wife so she wouldn’t catch it.
That company will never get a dollar from me.
Yeah, only all this only came to light within the last year or so, so I’m sure they got their money from you already. You have a right to dislike the company and one of the founding members, yes. He did terrible things. But dude, your comment seems overfilled with hate. It’s gonna be ok!
You don’t need to pay them to use their software, just visit massgrave.
The Xbox this article talks about is much, much broader than the console. Xbox is the name of the division of Microsoft responsible for games. If Xbox dies, so do Bethesda, Activision, Blizzard, and World’s Edge. We lose Elder Scrolls and Fallout, Call of Duty, Halo, and all three of the top real time strategy franchises: Warcraft, Starcraft, and Age of Empires.
I’ll be honest, I don’t really care about 99% of what Xbox does and it could go away in a heartbeat and I wouldn’t care. But that last 1% would be devastating. Age of Empires 2 & 4 and Age of Mythology are my top 3 played games of the last decade. In fact, aoe1, 2, 3, 4, and aom collectively make up 9 of my top 20 games by playtime on Steam, thanks to various rereleases. I would be gutted if I’m that went away.
Plus, there’s the wider impact. Half those mergers never should have been allowed, but now that they have happened, the amount of game devs who would lose their jobs if Xbox died would be devastating. That’s all their lives impacted. Many would probably have to leave the industry entirely and hope they can find work elsewhere. Others would be in a precarious position with a glut of workers making it easier for new employers to exploit them.
There have been layoffs across the board and most of the talent that made previous games great is already gone so i don’t have much hope for future games under Microslop because they will most likely be AI slop.
If Xbox dies, so do Bethesda, Activision, Blizzard, and World’s Edge.
IMO every dev/publisher acquired by MS was already tainted and on its way out. Most of the people responsible for the great games you associate with those companies are long gone. Let them die.
IMO every dev/publisher acquired by MS was already tainted and on its way out
I’ll assume you mean the more recent acquisitions, not ones from back in the day like Ensemble Studios. Which admittedly they shut down, but the games that they made live on, published by World’s Edge, and are better than ever.
But yeah, with the exception of World’s Edge, it’s hard to disagree. Blizzard in particular was probably so tainted before that being bought out can only have helped them. At least under Microsoft’s ownership there haven’t been any sexual abuse scandals. Bethesda it’s hard to say. They certainly haven’t done anything great since Microsoft bought them. But I’ll hold off judgment until like 12 months after the next mainline Elder Scrolls game comes out…or the 12 year anniversary of the announcement/teaser, if it still isn’t out by then. Activision…I don’t even know what they do, outside of CoD.
Yes, I was meaning the companies from the most recent aggressive acquisition period. Some of the older acquisitions weren’t totally wasted as you mentioned, though it is hard to say they were not worse off than if they had been able to succeed on their own. I was really bummed about Obsidian being gobbled up.
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Gamepass didn’t make their games shitty.
I’m back and forth on that… it might have had a hand in that because gamepass making them try to pump out content / games asap in order to populate the service… but also, MS is just generally shitty so maybe they just bungled two things at once.
First of all, fuck Microsoft. But I prefer a reality where Xbox exists as at the very least a competitor
I feel like I’m going to summon somebody from c/latestagecapitalism but it really seems like we’ve gotten to the point where companies are so big, so invested in everything, that the “scrappy can-do company” can no longer challenge the ingrained supremacy.
So we just kinda… wish for less abuse from whoever is still in the market.
I asked all the gamers I know who they think could turn around that Playstation news and enter the market by promoting physical media. All I really got was shrugs. Nobody really can. Sega is out. Gamestop probably would benefit most, but they don’t design hardware. Evercade has hardware and production lines, but fills a niche at best. You’ve got giants like Google who failed with Stadia, so Amazon and Samsung probably wouldn’t dare try.
It’s uhh… not good.
I think the reality is that we outgrew our need for consoles the way they’ve always existed, with certification, exclusives, walled gardens, generations, etc. that no longer make sense. If you want physical to come back, it’s probably on a PC somehow, but people also don’t typically have disc drives anymore, and even offline games tend to get patches and updates that you’d have to account for in some way; the media you can store that on will have a more restrictive shelf life and cost more to purchase.
Personally I don’t actually want physical media anymore. I just want digital media to actually be something I own.
I agree. I want physical to exist as an option, but i personally dont want it. I like digital and i want digital ownership.
There is definitely a benefit to having a set platform for game developers to target.
I don’t mean that PC is a bad platform… I just mean it’s a moving target. An ever-evolving target. The further back you go in the PC library the worse the game compatibility gets. We completely lost 16-bit games years ago without much fuss.
Consoles, though, serve as checkpoints almost. Place GTA IV into an Xbox 360 and it’ll act exactly the same as when you bought it.
The answer there is emulation. Good Old Games sells old DOS games and they work fine on modern computers because each comes wrapped in a DOS emulator tuned perfectly for it..
perfectly tuned for it.. for how long though?
That’s why GoG introduced the preservation program. So they can continue maintaining that software. But it’s a strict list.
How many indie titles on PC aged out of the platform and have no maintainer?
You get what I’m saying? Even the older console titles can still play on the console they were designed for… but PC is so nebulous that both software and hardware can age out of use.
A person who purchased Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for PC would be unable to launch the game in any modern OS. But if they have it on PS1, it still works.
A person who purchased Minecraft in 2011 can no longer play that game on the same computer they purchased it from. But if they purchased Minecraft on PS3… it still works today the same as the day it was purchased.
And once again, I must insist, I am not saying PC is a bad platform. I’m saying PC is a moving platform. Having a set target is a good thing for development and playability. We here are all a-okay with workarounds and emulation layers. But sometimes it’s a good thing to just have the person sit down and start playing without troubleshooting.
Perfectly tuned forever, just keep the game bundled with the same emulator.
If eventually the system that the emulator runs on diverges too far from what the emulator was able to run on, then wrap it in another emulator to emulate that. Or just update the emulator, DOSBox is under the GPL.
If you have an emulator then you don’t need a maintainer. As far as the game is concerned it’s still running on the exact same computer that it did when it was first released.
They’d need a PS1 emulator for that. DuckStation, for example.
The newer versions of Minecraft can’t. The old version they purchased in 2011 still can because it hasn’t changed.
And I’m pointing out that an emulator need not be a moving platform. It can be a frozen snapshot of a particular moment in time. Get a game working on an emulator and you can freeze that emulator’s code and configuration and then you’ll know that the game will always work on it from then onward. Bundle the emulator with the game, like GOG does, and there’s no “fiddling around” - you can indeed just sit down and play it.
I do wish they’d include some CRT shaders on their version of DOSbox though. Lots of those games’ pixels were never meant to be seen by the naked human eye.
You can swap out their dosbox.exe with a version that includes CRT shaders, such as DOSBox Staging or DOSBox-X.
Or you could wrap the existing DOSBox window in an external shader using ReShade, it’s a universal post-processing injector that can add a CRT filter. That way the emulator they wrap the game in remains untouched, you’re just modifying the visual output.
My search also found all-in-one frontends called ExoDOS and LaunchBox/RetroArch to do this to a whole library of GOG games so that you don’t have to do it individually to each.
Are 16-bit games not solved via DOSBox?
Also, I get where you’re coming from, but it’s the economics of it that are tearing down consoles. If you’ve got a set target, Game X launches on PS4. Now the PS5 comes out. It plays PS4 games, but it can’t ever run them better than the PS4 ran them. It also asks for an upgrade to run the “PS5 version”. It also demands you use a PS5 controller and not a PS4 controller. Game X is still super popular for more than the duration of the PS5’s lifespan. Now the PS6 is coming out, and the cycle will repeat.
Because of console cert, and all of those added costs, it’s far easier to get out the next indie hit on PC for less money. People go to play the indie hit, and it’s old news by the time it gets a port for Switch 2.
PS2 used to have tons of exclusive games that Sony didn’t even pay for the privilege. Now architectures and capabilities are so similar that if you’re making a game on only one platform, you’re leaving money on the table. So as the customer, you’ll probably end up going for the one with the most games you want to play, which has a greater chance of being PC every time the above paragraph happens.
Online gaming doesn’t have to come with a subscription fee, but they all choose to, and customers are savvy enough to notice their long-term costs after they’ve been gaming for some time.
Each of these things gets people to check out of the console space as it loses the value it once offered.
Nah, I’ve hit stuff that can’t run in it. No amount of futzing with the IRQ settings would restore audio, that kind of stuff.
Regardless, the issues you describe is not necessarily the way things have to be. I mentioned the Evercade in another post elsewhere. It’s a console made with cartridges. You put the cartridge in. You play the game. You don’t need to subscribe to anything. You don’t need to upgrade to another version. You don’t need to purchase the missing chapter.
If I made a game today for the Evercade, yes it would need to go through certification, but in 20 years, if I put that Evercade cartridge in my Evercade… It’ll play. No ongoing maintenance patches. No workarounds. No troubleshooting by the end-user.
I’m aware of the Evercade. I just don’t see that becoming a market that’s going to trend up and resemble the market that consoles had at their peak in 2009. So who’s going to challenge Sony’s supremacy? To me, it looks like no one, because even Sony isn’t poised to be supreme anymore.
But the beauty of an open platform is that people can and have made emulators, vm’s, translation layers, etc.
How much 16-bit software are you running on a ps5?
I run exactly what was designed for PS5 on a PS5.
EDIT: That came out more smarmy than it should have. I meant that the PS5 doesn’t need emulators, VMs, and translations layers for the software that was designed for it.
Your argument hinges on the incredibly dishonest argument that games written for 16bit DOS, before the PSX existed, were designed for modern 64 bit windows.
Of course a modern PC can play them without extra cost, in Gog’s case without extra hassle either. Needless to say you can’t play PSX games on your PS5, your best bet for playing them is a random PC. Even better than a PSX as 25-30 year old hardware can crap itself out.
When games are no longer released for the PS5, a current PC will be able to play new PC games, PS5 era PC games and at least PS4 era PC games with no hassle. With atiny bit of hassle or support from vendors way further back than that.
In my opinion, only PC and Linux matter. We desperately need Linux to succeed because it’s a community project. Yes, companies contribute to it, but it’s still a community project with no for-profit objective.
For many in the open-source community, contributing is an affair of love, not a way to enrich shareholders. We need this ecosystem to compete with console companies and Microsoft in the PC market.
Games Media has been acting like they want Xbox to die off and have only Sony and Nintendo making hardware, but I have been saying for years that would be horrendously bad for gaming.
Nintendo pulled the ultimate anti-consumer move by actively removing themselves from competing with PlayStation and Xbox.
Right now Sony is acting like they have no competition, pushing the envelop of what they can get away with while Xbox is still barely in the game: No more disks, absurd price increases, etc. They figure the same thing I was warning: Don’t like it? Where are you going to go? To what competitor? See you in two weeks.
But for all the Normies? They don’t care. Just eat up the slop until the water is boiling them alive and they won’t have noticed until its too late.
https://kazeta.org/
Why root for MS when you don’t have to? We have never had more megacorp-free gaming options.
It’s true; Game Pass exists in part because Microsoft didn’t have a great inroad against Playstation. Playstation kicked PS+ features forward in part because Game Pass was eating their lunch at a time when subscriptions seemed like a critical market element.
But these days, if I see an appeals board reject a corporate merger, it seems like a failed measure regardless - that both parties are already colluding as much as possible.
Well, let’s not forget that it was often not highly regarded, because the content was spread out so much. And that it launched in the wake of Baldur’s Gate 3.
Pretty sure Skyrim is on gamepass and that games still selling everywhere
Yeah. I had a game pass subscription back when it launched but I didn’t play it because of the full gameplay and world.
Its very different from a video streaming service
It makes little sense
You can make several episodes of a tv show for a fraction of the cost of a large video game, and in muuuuuuuuuch less time
I can also watch a season of a TV show far faster than I can play through a video game at the size that AAA publishers keep making them.
Yeah, similarly, you don’t rewatch movies or series all too often, but there’s quite a lot of people that just play one or two games pretty much forever…
I hate Microsoft. I love XBOX.
I hate Nintendo. I love Nintendo games.
I hate Sony. I loved Sony.
I love VALVE. I love Steam.
PC is the Endgame.
Until Gabe has a heart attack, venture capitalists takes over and stab all the PC gamers in the back. I guess there will be warning signs and it’s still people to un-DRM some Steam games so for now we’re ok.
People seem to forget Valve was ahead of the curve of being anti consumer. They were the first to really heavily push online DRM for single player games (Half Life 2) and made online marketplace games mainstream (TF2 store items like hats and CSGO skins). I wish they would make a new ground breaking single player game that wasn’t relegated to VR but I digress.
People will have to buy exabytes of disk in a rush to download their Steam libraries, storage prices will soar (again).
Sony has always been ‘cool but evil’ and haven’t really changed.
I loved the little Sony laptops. Other than that, meh. They kept pushing weird proprietary things…
Oh no.
Good news?
i really dont understand why people dislike game pass. i am mainly a pc player so i use it there but i also have an xbox. i have played so many games i woild have never tried and i live having the xbox studio games on release. i am a patient gamer so i always waited for a game to drop below $40. its nice having access to so many.
i honestly dont get the hate.
I can spend the monthly Game Pass cost on a new Steam game once a month and add to am ever growing, “permanent” library rather than just piss my money away on renting games.
People dont want a subscription to play games, it only made sense as an extension of Xbox Live. Outside of that it was mainly used as a way to demo some games for a month, or play that one game for $1.
Just buying games has way more value overall.
Day 1 AAA games were its biggest value in my opinion, because those are the most expensive games. I forgot the exact old prices, but I think on PC it was 12 and on console 15 Euros. Paying 180 Euros per year to “lend” them is still cheaper then buying one AAA game each or just every second month. I’m not the biggest fan of subscription. When I stop paying, then I loose access to those games. Yes, that’s the point of it, but that is also the problem I have. When the point of as service is a problem, then we have a problem. Therefore I purchase games rather (especially on PC). But that’s not the value for everyone else. Game Pass genuinely had its value, even if you subscribe for a few months in a row.
Yeah, I get it.
But we just dont want to set a precedent either.
How long until games are exclusive to game pass? You know thats the path they want to take. We gotta reject the service before it takes over and screws everyone.
You are locked in and they can just change the price whenever they want.
More subscription services will pop up, fragmenting the space, like the video streaming of today. Now you have to pay for multiple subs to play games you want to.
The ones who hate it are the ones who see what it will become.
That’s fine and dandy but what if it was the only option to play games? What happens when Gamepass is 49.99 a month? And a couple years later, it is 54.99, the 64.99.
What if they start gate keeping your save files? What if licenses expire and they get delisted and you can’t play them ever again?
This is the problem with Gamepass, and all subscription services if they dominate a market.
Piracy is an option. Your existing game library is an option. There is no shortage of alternative game marketplaces. Especially on PC where people still overwhelmingly prefer Steam even in cases where it costs more. I’m not saying it’s impossible but the odds of it happening in the current market is extremely unlikely.
Game Pass was great when it was literally only $1/month. After that, the value of it rapidly declined.
Subscription gaming has its problems but I’m with you on this.
i probably would have disliked avowed if i paid full price for it but trying it out on game pass i could be less critical and just enjoy it. and i tried south of midnight on game pass and liked it so much i bought it