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Comment by derektank | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't Games Pass also include cloud gaming as a feature? I have to imagine the hardware and data center costs for hosting games have risen a lot since 2022 (in a way the operating costs for e.g. Netflix haven't).

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It does include cloud gaming but the wide impression I get is that most users don't really use this feature. If you use everything game pass offers you, it's still a killer deal. The problem is the vast majority of subscribers don't use all the benefits and / or play nearly enough games to justify the price.

If only 3 people are using it, does that even matter?

Why would you think that out of interest?

Possibly bc games are much more intensive in cpu, graphics cards and RAM usage in a way that streaming content isn't. And that usage is per user since you don't see the same video game frames as everyone else. By comparison, you don't need to compute every frame of a netflix series. It's static, you just serve it up.

Xbox streaming uses Xbox Series X hardware in server blades. That hardware hasn't changed since the XSX released.

In fairness, they did just increase the price of all of their consoles due to tariff effects on hardware production. Same with playstation. It's pretty much the first generation in history consoles have gotten more expensive after release.

I doubt this is driving the game pass price increase though.

They bet on GP and acquisitions would increase their hw units sold and it did not happen. They can't really afford to subsidize day and date games from all their studios at the previous price anymore. And this is why they are now also releasing the games on the other consoles too. They just became the biggest 3rd party publisher, Xbox is not the focus going forward imo.

I think the best streaming service right now is the one offered by Nvidia. You play the games you already own from your Steam account on cutting edge hardware.

Sure, I just don't understand a rise since 2022 (I assume they're talking about per-user).

If it were a rise between console generations or something, sure, but I don't get why there would be one since 2022.

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