
Microsoft Launching $10/month Xbox Game Pass - executive
http://news.xbox.com/2017/02/28/introducing-xbox-game-pass/
======
minimaxir
A move following on the success of EA Access:
[https://www.ea.com/eaaccess/](https://www.ea.com/eaaccess/)

The Playstation 4 has PS Now ([https://www.playstation.com/en-
us/explore/playstationnow/](https://www.playstation.com/en-
us/explore/playstationnow/)), sorta. This press release throws a bit of shade:

> One of the best things about Xbox Game Pass is that you can discover and
> download the full titles directly on your Xbox One. That means continuous,
> full-fidelity gameplay without having to worry about streaming, bandwidth or
> connectivity issues.

~~~
Splines
Nvidia is also rolling out GeForce NOW: [http://www.geforce.com/geforce-
now](http://www.geforce.com/geforce-now)

People have also rolled their own solution: [https://lg.io/2015/07/05/revised-
and-much-faster-run-your-ow...](https://lg.io/2015/07/05/revised-and-much-
faster-run-your-own-highend-cloud-gaming-service-on-ec2.html)

~~~
stephengillie
Bit of a difference here. TFA and Parent are discussing unilmited video game
streaming packages, as a gaming parallel to Netflix or Prime Video.

You're linking to articles about _cloud gaming hardware_ services, which could
be used in tandem with the above streaming services, or could be used to play
games you already own.

There is the possibility to create lock-in by tying the two services together,
but hopefully market forces will prevent this.

~~~
sherincall
Additionally confusing since NVIDIA offers two different products with the
"Geforce NOW" brand.

The "Netflix for games" version is here:

[https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/games/geforce-
now/](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/games/geforce-now/)

Some explanations at the FAQ: [http://www.geforce.com/geforce-
now/faq](http://www.geforce.com/geforce-now/faq)

------
bruno207
I wonder if we are going to get to the point where people no longer "own" any
traditional media, such as movies, music and games, and rather pay monthly
subscriptions to have access to a giant library of all these things.

It's certainly in both the consumer's interest (massive library of content)
and the company's (revenue generated for dated content).

I worry about the implications of this, ie. exclusive content released only on
certain platforms or just the lack of control over the media you're paying for
(titles removed, modified, etc.)

Interesting to think about.

~~~
mikeyouse
This feels more broad than digital media.. Car sharing of expensive autonomous
cars means nobody will own a vehicle, the 'capital class' has purchased most
of the housing as investment so far fewer people will own homes, all of the
fiber and most of the WISPs use expensive proprietary equipment so to access
the internet you need to rent their devices, etc. etc. is there any area where
ownership is actually increasing?

~~~
ethbro
I guess the other way of looking at this is that people are freed from owning
non-investments. Where previously you had to own if you wanted to use, now
there's an alternative.

 _But_ (and big but) that does rental-trap those who can only afford to rent,
with no surplus income to invest. And makes monopolies even more dangerous
(PS: #&@+ Comcast).

------
makecheck
I hope subscriptions kill “paid DLC”. Enough of this trend of shipping
crippled-by-default games that require you to pay extra in order to have what
should frankly be called “the finished game”.

Once you’re paying a monthly fee, the games had better be complete, offering
_all available content as the games were meant to be played_. Otherwise, it
would be just another scam to seem “cheap” until you add up all the extra
charges to download more.

~~~
kevingadd
Define "complete". The vast majority of day-1 and post-release DLC is content
that was created by the development team after the gold master (the thing
burned to retail discs) was complete, so that the studio doesn't have to lay
them off.

There is the question of how this interacts with digital-only releases, but
you don't see it as much there.

Also: Why is it your business to say whether somebody can sell expansion
content for a game or not? Are premium services somehow immoral?

~~~
makecheck
The problem is that what passes for a finished game these days has diminished
compared to years ago, for the same base price. It is easy to see for instance
that an older RPG easily had 100-150 hours or more of play, while modern ones
top out at 40-50 “unless” you pay more for extra “chapters” (read: stuff that
should have been there when you bought the game). They release HALF a game for
the same $60-$80 or whatever they would have charged years ago, except now
they know full well that they will demand _another_ $5-$20 or more to obtain
the rest of the game. It is a racket that rewards crippleware over quality.

~~~
kevingadd
I can empathize with your displeasure here but this argument represents a
complete misunderstanding of games and how they're constructed.

'100-150 hours or more of play' is completely meaningless. A game can be 150
hours because it's completely padded out with awful grind (i.e. WoW's widely
reviled kill 10 rats formula, widely disliked formulaic Ubisoft Open World
Games with repetitive side-quests), or a 5-hour experience with adjustable
difficulty, optional objectives and high replayability (multiplayer!)

You simply can't judge the value of a game based on play time, no more than
you can judge the quality of a piece of software by the length of its features
list or the quality of a film by its running time.

I would make arguments that the quality of the experience you get out of
retail games is much higher than a decade ago, due to increased budgets,
better technology and general design refinement:

* Almost universally better tutorials

* More widespread access to options like control remapping and sensitivity adjustments

* Access to patches that fix obscure bugs and performance issues found after launch

* More consistent UI and narrative feedback telling you where to go in a game (so you don't get lost if you take a break)

* More consistent availability of adjustable difficulty levels and 'gimme' help in response to multiple retries

* More games that offer alternative paths and solutions

* Cloud saves

* Automated checkpointing

You can view some of these things as steps back from what you liked in
(picking random examples here) Final Fantasy 7 or even Final Fantasy 12, but
for the vast majority of game players (now a HUGE audience compared to a
decade ago) these changes make games more accessible and are generally steps
forward, despite some weak points.

I'm the sort of person who happily dumps 100+ hours into a JRPG, but I still
find that things have generally moved forward. Most of the high-profile
'short' games I purchase are stellar experiences, some of them are genuinely
on par with movies. Others are cheap enough that the short duration is not a
weakness - I didn't spend much on Life is Strange or Firewatch but they were
very memorable and delivered exactly what I paid for. If you want a big
sprawling RPG those are still out there, and they're great - Witcher 3 and
Final Fantasy 15 and Xenoblade X are 3 recent titles that I thought stacked up
well here for a lower cost (considering inflation) than you would have paid in
the past (especially if you use Amazon prime to buy games below retail!)

~~~
makecheck
I don’t have a problem with making games more accessible. The problem is that
game companies aren’t being honest: they are charging prices AS IF the game
were complete, when what they should be doing is stating up front is that
what’s shipped on Day 1 is worth FIVE dollars, not much more. They should
state clearly that DLC is not just “extras” but virtually half the game, for
additional charge, withheld from the start.

Similarly, I agree that patches to _fix bugs_ are useful. Unfortunately, game
companies have realized two things: (1) apparently it is now “OK” to ship
games on Day 1 that ARE BROKEN, especially if you reach a certain point in the
content where major breaking bugs are revealed or maps are practically empty
or areas have been cut off, etc.; and of course, (2) is that companies
realized updates don’t have to be just for bugs, they can be used to siphon
more money out of people for the content that belonged in the game from the
start.

------
muse900
Smart idea, don't know how it will affect the quality of games moving forward
as it seems that titles that would sell for lets say $40 a piece will now be
included in a bundle and probably get a fee out of that $10 a month.

On the other hand yes subscription/rent is the way to move forward. You lease
a car, you subscribe to netflix, prime, hbo, now you subscribe to gaming
libraries etc at some point will happen with food if its not there yet.

~~~
Retric
The most reasonable solution is for games to get a cut per hour someone played
them. This would tend to push replay-ability on the upside, grinding on the
down side. However, expect Halo 27 to be sold for full price then DLC and only
after that get added to the game pass.

~~~
Namrog84
[removed my comment]

~~~
Retric
I think this is somewhat balanced by the full price on new games.

Getting instant access to a large catalog of old games is mostly about
replaying them. In other words, people will not be download that gem to replay
it because they already got their three hours from it. Honestly though I can't
think of a game that world be worth 60$ for 3 hours, but I can think of lot's
of games that cost 60$ but did not hold my interest for 3 hours.

------
jasonkostempski
"Over 100" sounds like an incredibly small number. I'm guessing most people
could just buy the ones they like used for less than a few months of the
subscription. Although, the concept of "used" is a bit insane when the disc is
little more than a key to get to the current version of the game that just
gets downloaded.

~~~
freehunter
>the disc is little more than a key to get to the current version of the game
that just gets downloaded.

Hoo boy this burned me bad when I bought Half Life 2. It was 2004 and I had a
dial-up connection, so I bought the DVD from the store instead of purchasing
it from Steam. No way I could download that big of a game in any reasonable
time. Well, it turns out the DVD I bought from the store was just an installer
for Steam and a CD key, the game didn't actually come on the disc. So
Christmas day, I'm attempting to download 5GB on 56k along with everyone else
who just got the game that day.

~~~
khedoros1
What I remember about the original release of the game was that the DVD had
the game, but it was encrypted. You could pre-load it onto your machine, and
when it released, they'd provide the key over Steam, and the game would
decrypt.

Or maybe I'm confusing that with a pre-release encrypted file that you could
download ahead of time, to save the download later. I'll have to look at my
disks when I get home; I was pretty sure that they had the full data for the
game on them.

------
Eridrus
I wonder if this will kill the second hand games market the same way Netflix
murdered Blockbuster.

I don't really know how quickly you can buy a second hand game for a
reasonable discount, but if games people currently buy second hand appear in a
subscription instead I think that means GameStop is dead since that's their
main driver of profit AFAIK.

------
Splendor
Do we have any information about how game developers are compensated for
including their games in this new subscription option?

------
OmarIsmail
Key thing for people like me will be the difference between this library and
the Games with Gold library.

If you're new to Xbox though then this is an incredible value. Imagine a kid
getting an Xbone for X-Mas and the parents spending another $120 and the kid
gets effectively unlimited games for a year.

------
chrisper
I was upset when I found out that changing my nickname costs $10. I don't even
own an XBox and this was the game community thing on Windows. I think it's
called XBox App or so.

They should have just limited the amount you can change your username in a
given time. But I guess free money this way.

------
rdudek
It seems a bit pricey. If they would throw the Xbox Gold sub with this, it
might be worth it. EA Access has a great library and you can find an annual
key for that for less than $30. Though this is definitely better than PS Now
since you actually download the full game rather than streaming it.

~~~
charlieegan3
> If they would throw the Xbox Gold sub with this, it might be worth it.

I think this would be an great deal for $10 a month.

