They’re trying to soften the blow by adding new features to each tier, but it’s still just to disguise a price hike. More games are coming to the $15 tier, but it still won’t be day and date releases. First party games come to the $15 tier “within a year”, but that’s even excluding Call of Duty.
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Keep in mind, this corporation has data saying people are willing to subscribe to office software when there are legally free alternatives.
All the morons subscribing to these scams are data points for analysts to point to and say “See? Look at how stupid these people are! There’s no reason we shouldn’t be charging them more because they love to pay it!”
At one time XBOX fanbase were so desperate to play games like Halo and Gears of War that they were wrapping their dead XBOX 360 in a towel and putting it in an oven to resurrect it. That sounds so insane but it actually happened. Fast forward to now, Microsoft has raised hardware prices twice since May and now raising price of their game pass by 50%. Clearly they’re no longer interested in increasing XBOX market share or even retaining it. They’ve pivoted their strategy to milk their current XBOX fans as much money as they can until the brand is completely dead.
Not just business, the same dynamic is working for China right now too
Is this for the PC only version too? I can’t tell through all the marketing speak.
Microsoft is also increasing the price of its PC Game Pass subscription today, moving from $11.99 a month to $16.49 monthly — a nearly 40 percent increase. Microsoft isn’t trying to justify this increase with any added extras for PC players, though.
“The only change happening for PC Game Pass subscribers is that they won’t be getting Ubisoft Plus Classics, but they’ll be getting about 50 additional Ubisoft titles across PC Game Pass,” Blackwell says. “It will continue to get day one titles.”
I would reckon most are still saving money but we will know it is going to keep going up in price.
I would be subscribed but you can’t use it on steam deck.
Thank you!
Those billion AI GPUs won’t pay for themselves you know.
30$/month is hilarious. We all knew they were going to increase the price to justify how much microsoft is spending but at that point you might as well buy your games. I guess it would make sense if you’re playing every day one release and are already subscribed to other things that are now included such as fortnite, ubisoft+…
but 99.9% of gamers are not that obsessed. I have a hard time believing there are many people willing to spend 360$ to play games that will disappear as soon as you stop playing. and I have a hard time believing most standard game pass subscribers will stay subscribed now that recently released games aren’t included. That was the only reason I bothered subbing for a month every year or so
I have a hard time believing there are many people willing to spend 360$ to play games that will disappear as soon as you stop playing.
I hardly spend $100 on games a year. Subscribing to Game Pass means I’m overspending by April, and for games I don’t even own. Insane proposition.
I guess it would make sense if
Why do you people keep doing this?
It doesn’t make sense. Anyone who continues to pay for this is an even bigger idiot than the people who paid for it prior.
Even if you play every day one release, there’s hardly one of those per month. The math used to work out, for a long time, that one month of Game Pass was about 1/4 of the cost of a full priced new release, so going for a subscription made some kind of sense for a certain kind of consumer. This is a hard sell.
Yeah I agree. I never used Gamepass as I am not the target audience, but the value proposition made sense to me and I understood why some people paid for it.
This new pricing makes no sense at all, wouldn’t you rather just buy the games you want at that point? $360 a year gets you a lot of games, even accounting for a couple of AAA day one purchases every year.
Woo!
The morons who love renting get to pay more now!
I love watching this!
Renting has its place.
Don’t suppose there’s still a cheap trick to buying 3 years of vouchers for relatively cheap and upgrading to Ultimate? That worked great in 2022, but I’m guessing they shut it down.
I just bought three years of EA play and converted it into a year of gamepass last month. Seems to be the best deal left now.
I haven’t been able to buy cheaper months since the last price hike. Cdkeys had one sale and it sold out insanely fast.
CDKeys is definitely not what it use to be for this stuff. Use to get a dirt cheap year of basic, convert with a month of Ultimate n good to go. Or some variation of that. I think those days are long gone now unfortunately
lol anyone who pays that is a fucking idiot
As with almost all subscription services, the enshittification was inevitable.
Except this one even started shit.
Call me oldschool, but I like my games available when I want them, not held hostage behind a subscription fee.
That’s a valid opinion if you want ownership over everything else, fair.
But to blanket-label Game Pass as “shit” right from the start really isn’t fair to all those people for whom it was good value, and gave access to a lot of games they probably wouldn’t have been able to justify otherwise.
Personally it wasn’t for me, because I too don’t like subscriptions, but for some of my friends it was and I respect that.
It definitely was awesome if you were someone who gets bored of games easily and moves on. I think I get a high from the whole new game thing then it dissipates after a few hours.
Those people should just learn to pirate and stop being useful idiots.
They should also get into emulating so they can play all the better games that they missed out on.
But let’s be real: it was about consumption for the sake of consumption.
Game Pass is (was?) good for some gameplay patterns and bad for others.
It doesn’t fit my preferences, but I can see why it is appealing to others.
It was good value in the short term…but anyone capable of forecasting longer than 36 months knew instantly it was an awful deal, even compared to someone who had Playstation Plus and its free games + discounted games since the Sony hack in 2011 and doubly so compared to someone who bought Humble Bundle instead.
*laughs all the way to !freegames@feddit.uk*
isn’t fair to all those people for whom it was good value
Yeah man, same argument for the people getting ripped off by their drug dealers.
Who cares if the dealer is making 500% profit? If the loser junkie thinks it’s a good deal, then it must be!
Same.
Everytime I saw a dipshit shilling gamepass, it just reinforced my opinion of the average idiot.
Everyone who is upset now should’ve been upset sooner, but it’s better than nothing. I guess.
Let’s not forget that games leave Game Pass so there’s an element of FoMO
Some have even left while they still have early access plastered all over it. When you load them they say "this is a work in progress and doesnt necessarily reflect the finished product.
I think “cool. I’ll play that when its finished because its a good concept” then its leaving gamepass.
Fuck you im not paying to be a beta tester. You should be paying me if anything.
It started off very good actually with the £1 upgrades and converting existing subs (so 3 years of Game Pass for £70!) but it’s time has come to an end.
We all knew enshittification was coming, but it spooled up faster than expected.
More than a 100% price hike in my country. Just downgraded from ultimate to premium because my kid has an Xbox and it is still cheaper than buying the games individually.
But, otherwise I would have cancelled the plan.
Canceled my subscription. Fuck you, Microsoft.
That’s it, this is the last Xbox console I’ll ever buy
We used to really enjoy game pass as a family. I think the best part is discovering games that we wouldn’t have played otherwise. But at some point we stopped using it, so we cancelled. We’ve gotten 1 or 2 months free or cheap a couple of times now, but I ended up mainly playing one game… Although I suppose I did discover that I liked Avowed more than Expedition 33 😳. If I’d had to buy them, I would have only bought Expedition 33.
So I think we’ll keep going like this… Once a year or so use a cheap trial to get a month and try a lot of games, and use steam sales the rest of the year, and every now and then buy a full price game we really want.
Sounds like how a lot of us use streaming television these days, too. The price hikes change the dynamic, for sure. And I also liked Avowed more than Expedition 33.
You should get into emulating.
Way more better games that you wouldn’t be playing otherwise. And it’s all free.
