Any way you slice it, Microsoft has crafted an excellent service in Xbox Game Pass. The value proposition is undeniable, which is why many of us have several years of the service stocked up. You have a huge library of titles, get to play brand new full-price games the day they hit retail, and Microsoft has recently expanded it to PC in an official capacity, with xcloud in the works giving you more options to play than ever before. So everything's peachy, right?
Consider the following:
1. Microsoft wants consumers to sub long term. Yes they have promotions for you to get on board for $1 a month or $2 for two, but what they really want to sell are those year-long subscriptions. They even recently let you convert up to 3 years worth of Live or Game Pass to Game Pass Ultimate. Like any company wanting to maximize profits, they want you in their ecosystem for the long haul.
2. A big marketing point for them is to have games available on Game Pass day and date with their retail releases. They entice this further by offering "ultimate" editions of games for Game Pass subscribers, as is the case with Gears 5. If the numbers are any indication, a lot of people have been playing the game, making it Microsoft's most-played first party effort in years. And why shouldn't they? Getting to play a brand new $60 release on day one for $10 or $15 a month (even less if you're on a promotional price) is a great deal.
Here's the problem.
A lot of games in this current climate have been shifting, and will continue shifting, to a GaaS model, or otherwise have elements of said service games. Publishers plan and design their games out for you to play them long term, for months at a time, adding content as they go along, Microsoft amongst them. What this translates to is that you're left with many games that feel barebones at launch, light in content until they get fleshed out with regular updates, as they're designed to be. Destiny and Microsoft's own Sea of Thieves are great examples of games that eventually got it together, but the day one experience for those games were lacking.
Furthermore, with the way game development has ballooned into massive undertakings in resources, many games nowadays just don't work as intended at release. Day one patches have become the norm in this industry, and often that is never enough. Gears 5, for example, despite being a massive hit for Xbox Game Pass, has been marred with technical issues including but not limited to missing assets, server issues, audio issues, AI pathfinding issues, missing collectables, stuck animations, and literal gamebreaking bugs in the campaign that block progress. All of this provided you were fortunate enough to even get Xbox Live to work. The service has had issues ever since launch, and I'm wary thinking about how badly it will buckle with the release of Halo Infinite. This kind of thing isn't some uncommon exception; major releases tend to have rough launches, riddled with bugs until they're eventually ironed out over the following weeks and months.
Now, you might be saying "but Neat, games launching light on content and plagued with issues is hardly limited to Xbox Game Pass". Or you might be one of the wasteyutes bloviating "tough nuts Neat, if you don't like it, don't sub until after that shit gets fixed". All of that goes back to what I was saying earlier. This is a service explicitly pushed to get you on board long term. There's no "sub later", you are already subbed. This is also a service specifically marketed around having a low barrier of entry to get you to play the latest hot new game. And that game you're playing is missing a ton of content, recycles a bunch of quests to pad its length, and hell it probably doesn't even have an ending fam, and that's assuming the game will even let you play ball and get past its technical issues to get to that point. Put another way, the draw and appeal of Xbox Game Pass really doesn't jive with the gaming landscape in this day and age
Consider the following:
1. Microsoft wants consumers to sub long term. Yes they have promotions for you to get on board for $1 a month or $2 for two, but what they really want to sell are those year-long subscriptions. They even recently let you convert up to 3 years worth of Live or Game Pass to Game Pass Ultimate. Like any company wanting to maximize profits, they want you in their ecosystem for the long haul.
2. A big marketing point for them is to have games available on Game Pass day and date with their retail releases. They entice this further by offering "ultimate" editions of games for Game Pass subscribers, as is the case with Gears 5. If the numbers are any indication, a lot of people have been playing the game, making it Microsoft's most-played first party effort in years. And why shouldn't they? Getting to play a brand new $60 release on day one for $10 or $15 a month (even less if you're on a promotional price) is a great deal.
Here's the problem.
A lot of games in this current climate have been shifting, and will continue shifting, to a GaaS model, or otherwise have elements of said service games. Publishers plan and design their games out for you to play them long term, for months at a time, adding content as they go along, Microsoft amongst them. What this translates to is that you're left with many games that feel barebones at launch, light in content until they get fleshed out with regular updates, as they're designed to be. Destiny and Microsoft's own Sea of Thieves are great examples of games that eventually got it together, but the day one experience for those games were lacking.
Furthermore, with the way game development has ballooned into massive undertakings in resources, many games nowadays just don't work as intended at release. Day one patches have become the norm in this industry, and often that is never enough. Gears 5, for example, despite being a massive hit for Xbox Game Pass, has been marred with technical issues including but not limited to missing assets, server issues, audio issues, AI pathfinding issues, missing collectables, stuck animations, and literal gamebreaking bugs in the campaign that block progress. All of this provided you were fortunate enough to even get Xbox Live to work. The service has had issues ever since launch, and I'm wary thinking about how badly it will buckle with the release of Halo Infinite. This kind of thing isn't some uncommon exception; major releases tend to have rough launches, riddled with bugs until they're eventually ironed out over the following weeks and months.
Now, you might be saying "but Neat, games launching light on content and plagued with issues is hardly limited to Xbox Game Pass". Or you might be one of the wasteyutes bloviating "tough nuts Neat, if you don't like it, don't sub until after that shit gets fixed". All of that goes back to what I was saying earlier. This is a service explicitly pushed to get you on board long term. There's no "sub later", you are already subbed. This is also a service specifically marketed around having a low barrier of entry to get you to play the latest hot new game. And that game you're playing is missing a ton of content, recycles a bunch of quests to pad its length, and hell it probably doesn't even have an ending fam, and that's assuming the game will even let you play ball and get past its technical issues to get to that point. Put another way, the draw and appeal of Xbox Game Pass really doesn't jive with the gaming landscape in this day and age
