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Comment by squigz | Hacker News Reader

This recent price increase notwithstanding, Game Pass has been, in my opinion, and those of almost every gamer I know, incredibly good value for the money. I suppose it's probably like Netflix at the beginning though, and we'll start seeing more things like this price hike and plan differentiation

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It's a good deal if you're really really using it, or I guess if you're a blizzard sub (not even sure if this is still a thing).

If you're just playing Silk Song now and then, you can buy it for $20 from Steam. I get you don't fully own it with steam, but it a hell of a lot closer to owning it than having temporary access via GamePass.

IMO the real issues for the more casual gamer (who is not a mobile gamer), is having either a decent console or cloud gaming. There's not a ton of options besides GEForce Now and XBox Cloud, and the Steam consoles are kinda crap and outdated at the moment. Also XBox cloud kinda sucks last I checked and had restrictions on multiplayer etc.

If XBox cloud gets as good as nVidia's cloud AND you get GamePass library access AND you can use a pretty dumbed down / cheap console for cloud gaming... then this might be a win for at least a subset. I think this is where they are headed? Even with all that, it's hard to beat Steam + GEForce Now which is the direct competitor.

I dream of a world where Windows is no longer the dominant OS for gaming.

much to my disappointment, GamePass doesn't give a sub to World of Warcraft.

> Game Pass has been, in my opinion, and those of almost every gamer I know, incredibly good value for the money.

it's a subsidised introductory price to capture market share and kill off the competition with the hope of creating a monopoly ("predatory pricing")

Apparently it was profitable (not subsidized), not sure if true.

https://www.gamesradar.com/platforms/xbox-series-x/xbox-pres...

That's specifically Game Pass being profitable. It conveniently leaves out the long-term viability of whole supply chain profitability.

Whether the developers lose money as a result of the deal is extraordinarily hard to calculate and Microsoft doesn't disclose.

I guess that depends on how they measure its profitability.

If it's services costs and 3rd party deals probably. But if you include the costs of all their 1st party games included day and date it's likely not, specially since they acquired Bethesda and Activision Blizzard.

A hint of that is that they are now releasing even their exclusive Xbox games now on PS and Switch 1/2.

depends entirely how you attribute the game revenue

this price rise was driven by them fearing cannibalisation of game sale revenues for the imminent new call of duty release

last year just on CoD they gave up $300 million (due to gamepass)

https://archive.is/ic79u

And over 82% of the copies sold were on PlayStation.

Seems MS bet on GamePass + all the publishers acquisitions moving lots of units of Xbox hardware but that simply did not happen, so now they pivoted to be the biggest 3rd party publisher and are releasing everything on all the other consoles, even their own original Xbox Studios games like Forza, Flight Simulator, Gears of War, etc.

I thought common wisdom was that console hardware was sold at low profit to generate software-based revenue?

If that's true, then selling software at low profit to sell hardware at low profit to sell software at high profit seems convoluted.

If you’re in high school/college (hell your 20’s) and can game 10+ hours a week it was an unbelievable deal. Even $30 isn’t that crazy if you’re really using it. But a lot of people can’t get that kind of value out of it and it doesn’t help that Microsoft keeps cancelling every interesting game and/or lets their best studios languish.

I think it's still a good deal even for more casual gamers - I imagine it would feel worse to spend $80 on a game that you may put an hour or two into, if you ever launch it at all. I imagine most casual gamers will simply not buy many games; whereas on Game Pass you can browse, pick up a game (that would otherwise cost you an arm and a leg) for the few hours you've got for gaming.

But like another commenter points out, if you're playing games like Silk Song or other similarly-priced games, it makes more sense to buy the game.

But yeah, you're absolutely right: lots of flaws with it, and I expect it will just get worse, much like Netflix.

Long live Steam, which I still use and love :)

$30 would be 6 AAA titles per year. There are barely that many descent games released in a decade.

Gamepass has a lot more than AAA’s (Silk Song for instance) and if you haven’t been sticking with consoles in particular over the last 10-15 years the back catalog of tentpole titles is actually pretty impressive.

I’ve had many conversations with people in their 30s who have not touched video games since the 360/PS3 era. Gamepass, even if just for a few months, makes a ton of sense for them if they have the time.

I say this as somebody who absolutely does not think people should be paying $30 for gamepass generally speaking and I think Microsoft/Xbox is incredibly weak right now. But there are certainly cases where it makes a ton of sense and Sony isn’t exactly offering a better alternative unless you want a Final Fantasy machine that’s library is dominated by PS3/PS4 remasters (which in many ways mimics the value prop of gamepass for those who have not been gaming for years).

> There are barely that many descent games released in a decade.

There were three in the 90s that I know of. Have I missed some since?

At least the two Descent: FreeSpace titles...

Skyrim, GTA V, Minecraft

I think it was either a joke or a comment on the "descent" spelling of decent, referring to the Descent (sci-fi space sims) games.

Shamed me there

Agreed; it has been an incredible deal, especially with the redemption loopholes they originally left open. I think I got nearly three years for less than $150 originally. But it's pretty obvious now that they've been nearly giving it away so they can capture the market and then raise the price.

You happen to know many gamers who do spend a lot of time playing (different) games.

But that's not necessarily the user base of Game Pass, especially when it was cheap. Many don't even play 1 new title per month.

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