Microsoft doesnt have a bad track record in gaming and doesn't have greedy approaches. They like to dump money without forcing profits. It is a win for gamers
Microsoft gaming strategy does benefit gamers. Which counteracts the problem of losing a competitor.
Microsoft doesnt care about profits on single products much compared to the grand strategy they follow. For example AoE4 and all the aoe franchise doesnt really give a lot of profit Microsoft would care about, yet they keep investing and updating it bc they like it and like the strategic benefit.
Not caring as strictly about profit means you dont get as many greedy microtransactions and more balanced approaches. The game pass is also a really cheap deal if you play variety
No subscription deal is ever a good financial decision long term and companies know that. Most people keep their subscriptions running and will end up paying more long term.
That's not even getting into the "ownership" vs renting aspect.
They went up from $15 to $17 or so; the small single digit shift does kind of make me think they've eyed the big "2-0" as the price point where a lot of people might reconsider.
I'm certainly considering the benefit of it each month, and so far I've consciously decided to keep it. If it's ever poor value like Netflix, it's going (that said, Netflix has introduced enough shows that I have weighed whether to resubscribe)
Oh, I guess I was referring to Ultimate. I don’t think regular one-system pricing has gone up yet, it’s still $10. I’m just going for Ultimate for other perks.
Grandmas, young people. Most people are notoriously far from financially savvy. Many overpay or fail to track their subscriptions.. If you didn't know at least one person paying for a subscription they didn't actually use in the last month I would be surprised.
You have to keep up with your gaming habits long term to keep up with the subscription costs, basically never replay anything (especially not long RPGs that can take you months to finish), not waste subscription time playing non-GamePass games, or remember to cancel. And Microsoft, like most subscription services, are banking on people maintaining subscriptions they aren't fully using.
Well yeah, that's the point. Maybe Sony will stop forcing exclusivity and sign a deal with MS to get Bethesda games back on PS and FF and others on Xbox.
That would be fantastic, but it’s really hard for me to have that much faith in corporations. We’ll see though. I was really looking forward to seeing Bethesda make another RPG for PSVR, but I’m sure the odds of that happening now are less than zero thanks to Microsoft.
Great a duoloply again. That's what I want instead of independent game studios just making games and letting people play them on what ever platform they want.
Part of the problem is that since Sony is so heavily invested in exclusives, if Microsoft doesn't have any exclusives and all their games also come out of Playstation, that's incentive for people to purchase a PS5 over an Xbox because they know they'll get all of the games that both Sony and Microsoft make. So even if Microsoft doesn't want to do exclusives, they kind of have to if they want to keep people from just purchasing their competitor's console.
Or they can be like me, just get a PC and if you really need a console, a cheap Xbox.
PC gaming is a plus and game pass is a plus. Sony will eventually give me their games. I've bought multiples of every Sony system in the US since the PS1 through the 4. But I'm done with them
I would love to hear how this could possibly make exclusivity better. The only possible change is that all of the ABK library becomes Xbox/PC exclusive.