Questions about Xbox Game Pass for PC

biggles

2[H]4U
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I do not own an Xbox One, but do have an old Xbox 360 and of course a gaming PC. When buying a Ryzen 5 3600 recently it included a 3 month Xbox game pass. Here are some questions:
1. It says the service includes some 360 games like Hydro Thunder and Banjo Kazooie. Will those games be available on the 360 or is it only for Xbox One through backward compatible mode?
2. Would it be smart to start with games only available on the Microsoft store like Forza Horizon 3 and Sea of Thieves? There are a lot of other good games on there like Final Fantasy XV, but perhaps I can get those on sale someplace else in the future (e.g., on Steam).
3. Anyone tried the service on PC? How was it? I have heard bad things about the Microsoft game store (crashing games and other tech problems mostly).
 
1) Don't know about that I would assume only available on the XBONE but I can't say for sure.

2) Not necessarily. The thing is MS games are likely to always be on gamepass. They own the licensing rights, they don't have to pay anything additional to have them, so they use them to draw people in. Other games do come and go, depends on the deal MS has with the publisher. So I'd probably just play what interests you most at a given time.

3) Worked fine for me. I used it for The Outer Worlds and everything was fine. Installed the game for no charge, it ran just as I'd expect. I am not a fan of the way they handle their "Modern UI" stuff but it doesn't seem to have any issues. Only real issue I can note is their downloads are slower than Steam, but I see that on the XBONE itself. I think MS just doesn't use as fast a CDN as Steam.
 
3. Anyone tried the service on PC? How was it? I have heard bad things about the Microsoft game store (crashing games and other tech problems mostly).

I've had Game Pass PC on and off for the past 6 months and the service is great...lots of games available...only issue is that the downloads sometimes stall and I have to keep manually hitting 'Resume'
 
Some impressions after using gamepass for PC for the past week. It is a lot better than expected. After hearing about tech issues with the Xbox game store I was surprised to have no tech problems yet.

Games tried were Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Streets of Rage 4, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Gears of War 5. It is interesting that some of the Xbox One games are not available on PC, like RDR2. But there are enough good games to stay busy for a while.

I have to admit to being uninterested in this service previously and the only reason I tried it is that it was included for free with the Ryzen 5 3600 purchase. For $5 a month it may actually be worth it.
 
The console selection is definitely larger than the PC one. Most of the titles are for both platforms, but maybe 20% aren't on the PC. I think it's mainly because of licensing related to the PC ports.
Still, it's tough to beat $5 per month. The console service is 2x more expensive. Obviously the PC games have the potential to be far more advanced (if you have the hardware), too. Gears 5, Gears Tactics, and the Outer Worlds launched on Gamepass. Those are $60 games and the Gamepass version of Gears was even the primo version, too. Tough to argue with that for $5. It'll be interesting to see what things are like once the new Xbox launches. Wouldn't shock me if they went for a tiered approach with even more new release games...which I'd honestly be okay with.
 
The console selection is definitely larger than the PC one. Most of the titles are for both platforms, but maybe 20% aren't on the PC. I think it's mainly because of licensing related to the PC ports.
Still, it's tough to beat $5 per month. The console service is 2x more expensive. Obviously the PC games have the potential to be far more advanced (if you have the hardware), too. Gears 5, Gears Tactics, and the Outer Worlds launched on Gamepass. Those are $60 games and the Gamepass version of Gears was even the primo version, too. Tough to argue with that for $5. It'll be interesting to see what things are like once the new Xbox launches. Wouldn't shock me if they went for a tiered approach with even more new release games...which I'd honestly be okay with.
It has to do with distribution agreements. 2K only has one with Steam and Epic for the PC version of RDR2. It would be nice if Play Anywhere would become a universal thing. I would be interested to see if publishers have data they can see about people buying the game more than once so they can have it on multiple platforms, and if this data points to it being a lucrative revenue stream that they refuse to give up. Looking around I'm sure that particularly with Rockstar games people are really likely to double or even triple dip.
 
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