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Comment by moogleii | Hacker News Reader

I think Microsoft's play was to further strengthen Game Pass to the point that Sony can't deny it on their platform anymore (or at least make it hurt more to continue doing so). It makes sense that MS won't remove games from Sony's access, but it does give them more levers to play with. "Hey this game is 'free' on Game Pass (PC + XBox). You can still buy it for PlayStation, though."

And Sony's move is simply a defense against that.

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I have PC Game Pass ultimate. The only thing I've used it for is Halo. The games that I got for "free" on it I actually bought elsewhere and added up to less than I spent on ultimate, even new games like DeathLoop. I've spent about 80 on the games I could play from game pass, it's like $180/year (I paid less through friends at MS). Took me a 2 months to finish death loop, cost me $30 on steam sale, that's break even. They've crippled several indy games, for instance astroneer, to only play on supported premium servers, that cost my friend (with gamepass) $30 that he could have just purchased astroneer on (and just run server locally or a linode).

So far while game pass seems cool it's not really panning out monetarily for me.

Other than these big studios that MS built, the rest of the game pass catalog would be easy for sony to pick up on their own game pass.

I'll also note that no one seems to be talking about nintendo, who also has a great stable of titles, needs to take on game pass. Sony and Nintendo's exclusive catalogs are in the same ballpark (if very different).

Microsoft also loses out on the console money, since why would I buy a console when I have this gaming pc that's much better? So makes sense for me to just buy the PC games and a PS5, that and my switch has me covered.

> So far while game pass seems cool it's not really panning out monetarily for me.

Which is why microsoft spent $100 billion on studios this year. Zenimax and AB consistently put out hugely popular games, and I expect microsoft will continue buying.

May work in general, for me specifically no.

I've played 1 game from Zenni in the last 10 years for more than a few minutes (deathloop), (tried their others no interest, hate stealth, hate super long games). One from blizzard (overwatch this one got me, like 900 hours), one from activision (warzone for like 3 days). So that stable of games wouldn't have me specifically retaining game pass, I'd just buy them. Also Halo wants to double dip you with the game and the battle pass even if you have ultimate.

I think Zenni was a much better acquisition than AB. Blizzard has some great IP, they don't have the talent to make it go anymore. Activision has what, COD and a ton of old IP they weren't doing anything with? Really Microsoft will need to take one of their solid studios that is bad at IP and good at execution give them something like Starcraft, but I don't even know how deep their stable of developers without projects is right now.

But also I realized a while ago, I have way less time than games to play. I have an unlimited 2k entitlement for instance and barely play those games (didn't like civ, not into sports games). And I do hate subscriptions that remind me constantly what I'm paying for them that I know I'm not using.

Anyway, my $0.02.

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