Xbox Gamepass
When Xbox made the missteps at E3 2013, few would have thought they would have ever got fans back on their side to the level that they have now.
They still make plenty of mistakes, but they do deserve some praise for how well they have done this year so far. Gamepass is crazy money for value.
This year alone has seen Bethesda join the party, bringing a huge number of games on one day. If you download and play all of them, you’ve more than made your subscription costs back for a year’s worth of cost. Ea Play was added to PC Gamepass and then they announced that both Outriders and MLB The Show would be launching into it on their day of release.
Going forward how can they improve it? Well, we need to see the new first-party games start to roll, as much as they have been saying the right thing for a while, we still haven’t seen them land a punch with games. If they can add six to seven games a year, of let’s say 80 plus rated first-party games, they might even be able to claw back some market share from Sony.
This brings me back to the title of this post, what is the hidden cost of all these games being so easy to play and enjoy?
Quite simple… All these subscription services give you so many games you simply can’t play all of them.
Even during a year of Lockdown and plenty of time to game, I still have an endless backlog. Every time I get halfway through one game, I am gifted (I know I pay for it, but you know what I mean) a new game to try. This is a cycle I can’t escape, and it’s seen me complete fewer and fewer games over the last three years all while being able to experience more games than I would ever hope to.
Don’t get me wrong there have been some gems that I would never have bought outright, titles like Lonely Mountains: Downhills and Immortals Fenyx Rising that I’ve loved and my Gamepass subscription finally let me experience Star War Jedi Fallen Order, which I had never got round to buying. That’s where these services shine the most.
Think of it like Pick ’N Mix, when you have all those sweets in front of you, are you only going to pick one? No chance, you’ll stuff your bag with as many different things as you can.