PC Game Pass is getting a $2 price hike this September, but consoles will be hit harder

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polonyc2

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PC Game Pass will get a $2 price increase starting from September 12, as Microsoft rejigs its subscription services to "address changing market conditions"...that means the $9.99 per month subscription for PC Game Pass subscribers will rise to $11.99, but things are a little more complicated—and less favourable—for our console friends

Most notable is a new Xbox Game Pass tier which kills off one of the subscription service's biggest selling points: day one first-party Microsoft releases...the new tier is called Xbox Game Pass Standard, and in Microsoft's words will offer "hundreds of high-quality games to play on your console," in addition to access to console multiplayer (yes, console users are still paying for multiplayer)...that will cost $14.99 a month

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will increase to $19.99 a month from $16.99. That tier still provides access to first-party Microsoft games on day one, in addition to cloud streaming services...existing subscribers of Xbox Game Pass for Console ($10.99 a month) won't be hit with the change, with that tier remaining available to anyone with a current subscription...once you cancel, though, you're out forever...

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/pc-ga...is-september-but-consoles-will-be-hit-harder/
 
Who didn't see this coming? Sadly plenty of people will fight and tell you how great of a deal it is not realizing the goal is to increase prices long term. While de-incentivizing purchasing games. Yes you can argue that as of now we don't technically own digital games; but it is still a lot more favorable than subscription.
 
Flogger23m said:
Who didn't see this coming? Sadly plenty of people will fight and tell you how great of a deal it is not realizing the goal is to increase prices long term. While de-incentivizing purchasing games. Yes you can argue that as of now we don't technically own digital games; but it is still a lot more favorable than subscription.
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It's still a good deal to a lot of people. If you don't like it, don't subscribe. Digital game sales won't be going anywhere. Movie ones didn't and we have a million streaming subscription options.

We still can buy blurays of movies even though digital streaming exists, both as a subscription and a one time buy. Many prefer blurays and 4k bluray for the better audio and visual quality, as well as actual ownership.

As far as games preservation, I'd be far angrier about physical games going away than people subscribing to a digital service. Steam brought that to an end, despite all the evangelists here who act like it was a gift from (insert deity here).

Rally for bluray distribution of games without drm or support gog for drm free games you can backup yourself. Feeding the beasts with FOMO by buying full priced or slightly discounted games off of steam or elsewhere only makes game ownership more and more tenuous.

Speak with your cash, not your mouth. And don't claim piracy does anything but let you steal games. It isn't a game preservation movement and never has been.
 
Its expected, just like the tv streaming services the prices will continue to increase. just curious for those still subscribing, at what price would be too much?
 
$3 for Ultimate Xbox pass is a bit tough but my son really enjoys it. Checks out a lot of games he wouldn't already - even finds games his little bros would like and shows it to them. Net positive.

It was already too expensive IMO...I was always scamming for discounts. I am getting close to running out now before a major discount event is occurring (i.e. Black Friday).
 
Newbie_52 said:
just curious for those still subscribing, at what price would be too much?
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I'm currently not subscribed (I only subscribe when I want to play a particular game and even then don't really use the service as much as other people)...but I would say above the $19.99 mark is when it would get expensive for most people...same with Netflix when it went above the $19.99 mark for the 4K tier
 
GoldenTiger said:
It's still a good deal to a lot of people. If you don't like it, don't subscribe. Digital game sales won't be going anywhere. Movie ones didn't and we have a million streaming subscription options.

We still can buy blurays of movies even though digital streaming exists, both as a subscription and a one time buy. Many prefer blurays and 4k bluray for the better audio and visual quality, as well as actual ownership.

As far as games preservation, I'd be far angrier about physical games going away than people subscribing to a digital service. Steam brought that to an end, despite all the evangelists here who act like it was a gift from (insert deity here).

Rally for bluray distribution of games without drm or support gog for drm free games you can backup yourself. Feeding the beasts with FOMO by buying full priced or slightly discounted games off of steam or elsewhere only makes game ownership more and more tenuous.

Speak with your cash, not your mouth. And don't claim piracy does anything but let you steal games. It isn't a game preservation movement and never has been.
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With physical games it's a tough ask when disc technology is struggling to keep up. And I don't think we're keen to go back to the days of multi-disc game releases. Digital downloads are where it's at... and it may be difficult to avoid DRM entirely, at least on consoles.
 
A price increase for the privilege of not owning a whole bunch of games?

...

Yahahaharrr.gif
 
I wonder if MS will ever release that Family Pass they were testing in select markets, that would make the steady increase of Game Pass pricing a bit more palpable.
 
Aurelius said:
With physical games it's a tough ask when disc technology is struggling to keep up. And I don't think we're keen to go back to the days of multi-disc game releases. Digital downloads are where it's at... and it may be difficult to avoid DRM entirely, at least on consoles.
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SD cards are cheap enough now. That's what the Nintendo switch uses, essentially. :)
 
polonyc2 said:
Most notable is a new Xbox Game Pass tier which kills off one of the subscription service's biggest selling points: day one first-party Microsoft releases...the new tier is called Xbox Game Pass Standard, and in Microsoft's words will offer "hundreds of high-quality games to play on your console," in addition to access to console multiplayer (yes, console users are still paying for multiplayer)...that will cost $14.99 a month
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isn't Day 1 first party exclusives one of the biggest selling points of the service?...to eliminate that from one of the Xbox tiers seems strange
 
If a game is good it is worth paying even $70 to own it. If a game is not good, it's not worth playing even for free. Simple.
 
polonyc2 said:
isn't Day 1 first party exclusives one of the biggest selling points of the service?...to eliminate that from one of the Xbox tiers seems strange
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MS gambling that if you want Call of Duty then you will pony up for the higher tier. Basically playing hard ball

The tail (Call of Duty) is wagging the dog (console)
 
Aurelius said:
With physical games it's a tough ask when disc technology is struggling to keep up. And I don't think we're keen to go back to the days of multi-disc game releases. Digital downloads are where it's at... and it may be difficult to avoid DRM entirely, at least on consoles.
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Up to 100GB is still sufficient for a lot of games. I think it's too late at this point, maybe 15 or more years ago it might have had a shot.
 
GoldenTiger said:
It's still a good deal to a lot of people.
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It's also stagnated in subscriptons, which means a lot of people don't agree.
If you don't like it, don't subscribe.
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Be careful with such a statement, because more often than not people do listen and then the company complains why people don't subscribe.
DkxCaStVsAAioTw.jpg

Digital game sales won't be going anywhere. Movie ones didn't and we have a million streaming subscription options.
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Movies make sense, but games is a totally different situation.
We still can buy blurays of movies even though digital streaming exists, both as a subscription and a one time buy. Many prefer blurays and 4k bluray for the better audio and visual quality, as well as actual ownership.
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Except with games you can't always buy them. You have to depend on remakes and remakes aren't always better.

View: https://youtu.be/obKkddkLrF4?si=kjYIAvqNM5E4RSa6
Speak with your cash, not your mouth. And don't claim piracy does anything but let you steal games. It isn't a game preservation movement and never has been.
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Except that it often is the best way to preserve games. Metal Gear Solid 4 is still only on the PS3. A lot of old Nintendo games aren't even for sale. If you wanna play these old games then you gotta pirate them.
 
Aurelius said:
With physical games it's a tough ask when disc technology is struggling to keep up. And I don't think we're keen to go back to the days of multi-disc game releases. Digital downloads are where it's at... and it may be difficult to avoid DRM entirely, at least on consoles.
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The problem with physical games is that modern physical games are not like older physical games because of the DRM. I've already experienced too many modern games which no longer work because the company went under, or turned off their authentication check, etc.

But digital is no better (looking at you Nintendo), where a company can just change things overnight.

This is why I use GoG whenever possible over Steam.

As far as XBox, it's not surprising. Their end goal seems to be to have the gaming as a streaming service, so you no longer have any ownership. But I find this stupid, because Microsoft as a company use to be of the mind everyone should have their own computer and software, so that you're not reliant on big corporations and their dumb terminals which you time shared. I guess though as Microsoft became one of those corporations...
 
GoldenTiger said:
It's still a good deal to a lot of people. If you don't like it, don't subscribe. Digital game sales won't be going anywhere. Movie ones didn't and we have a million streaming subscription options.

We still can buy blurays of movies even though digital streaming exists, both as a subscription and a one time buy. Many prefer blurays and 4k bluray for the better audio and visual quality, as well as actual ownership.
Click to expand...

The problem with games is they will make it less desirable to purchase. There are more ways you can do this with games compared to movies:

- Not put them on sale, or seldom put them on sale. This can make the subscription a "better deal" even when it is $25 a month. No more $70 games, you get hundreds of games for $25! Of course you may only want to play 1 of those games... so the option is $25 or $70 for a 3 year old game. Goal here is to raise the price regardless of method.

- Locking content to subscription. Quests and skins for single player games, or things like double XP for multiplayer games.

I suppose with movies you can do stuff like lock deleted scenes to subscriptions but generally people don't care much about that, and you can probably Youtube it. Compare that to having quests locked behind subscriptions. I think more would be worried about not being able to play all the missions in the game.
 
Flogger23m said:
Who didn't see this coming? Sadly plenty of people will fight and tell you how great of a deal it is not realizing the goal is to increase prices long term. While de-incentivizing purchasing games. Yes you can argue that as of now we don't technically own digital games; but it is still a lot more favorable than subscription.
Click to expand...

I 100% prefer to own my console games on physical media. It's more difficult with PC, as the majority are digital releases (Steam, etc.).

But, I also like the subscription. I can play the games that are coming out, finish them (or get bored), and move onto the next one. For around the price of 2 games a year. That's for PC and consoles. However, your statement "While de-incentivizing purchasing games" hits hard with the console part. I WANT to buy the physical media for console games. If these subscriptions move more people to digital only, the physical stuff will be completely gone in a generation or two. I know it's inevitable eventually, but I don't like it. Those recurring subscription fees are going to be gold for them. Constant revenue stream just to continue to play games. When you don't want to pay, you have an expensive paperweight.

I like subscriptions when it comes to playing a ton of games, but I also don't like how it will lead to the fall of physical media. I'd like to "own" digital copies, but that subscription is fine for most people. Especially if you have to pay to play online, it's just a few bucks more to have that huge library of past games that you want to try or play to complete and move on...

So... I both like the idea of subscriptions but hate what the outcome will be. I am part of the problem there.
 
Flogger23m said:
Who didn't see this coming? Sadly plenty of people will fight and tell you how great of a deal it is not realizing the goal is to increase prices long term. While de-incentivizing purchasing games. Yes you can argue that as of now we don't technically own digital games; but it is still a lot more favorable than subscription.
Click to expand...
This can be a bit of an opposition, it is either a great deal and de-incentivizing purchasing games (it would be a total failure for the customer if that was not the case, imagine paying for this and still purchassing as many game than before...) or not a great deal and do not de-incentivizing purchasing games.

Being favorable or not depends of said deal and the invidual gamers, if I look at the percentage of games I reached 10% of all my services I bought game for, not so sure I would not have been better off with a subs....
 
GoldenTiger said:
As far as games preservation, I'd be far angrier about physical games going away than people subscribing to a digital service. Steam brought that to an end, despite all the evangelists here who act like it was a gift from (insert deity here).
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I would bet the percentage of game bought on steam in 2012 that I could launch easily today would be much higher than in 2002 the percentage of games I had in 1992 (on Nintendo or computer) that I still have with me and would be able to install and launch them.

For people without a good track record of taking care of their stuff (and serials numbers and manuals to answer the anti-piracy question at game launch) or versus floppy disk, steam game survival rate is probably incredibly good, I know for me it is incredibly higher than anything else ever was.
 
With how big games are getting (100GB+), I could see consoles using built-in storage merely as temp space and you have to download or stream the game from a server. And of course that would be a subscription.
 
westrock2000 said:
It definitely takes a real job to afford all the storage space for pirated content.
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Military 100% disability can help too. My wife and I got married partly to offset all our dog expenses via the extra $150 a month for both of us afterwards.
 

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