Late to the discussion but I want to commend the lot of you for actually getting to the real implications of Microsoft showing their hand and further confirming they want out of the hardware business. Investors won't let Microsoft remove themselves from revenue generating business without a compelling growth and profitability case. This can go two ways: success and now they have increased profits, or poorly and they continue to withdraw from hardware and reposition themselves as a publisher.
This is the one part that I really care about ATM, because it's 100% confirmation that the next wave of Xbox devices will not be traditional consoles. That January Discord leak continues to deliver on so many levels, the most OP (non-ransomware) leak in modern gaming history IMHO.
Keeping Game Pass for new users "limited" to just PC Game Pass should more or less indicate exactly what direction they are taking the next hardware. That will be very interesting to see manifest, all things considered.
They have been saying for years their platform is Game Pass (and xCloud, but lol at that). Microsoft is finally showing their hand and taking real action to this end.
I subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate, so it seems nothing changes for myself except the price, but this really isn't the clear messaging they needed here.
Game Pass Core
Game Pass Standard
Game Pass Console
Game Pass PC
Game Pass Ultimate
Game Pass Vista
Game Pass Enterprise
Game Pass Community
Game Pass One
Hijacking the Game Pass name and fucking up the messaging; Microsoft is back in charge of Xbox. Confusing naming, confusing offerings, confusing prices - that's the classic Microsoft playbook. Phil may have kept the brand alive, but he had to sell its soul to do it. Pappa Microsoft wants their ROI and they're not asking nicely anymore.
This is 100% driven by Microsoft. I have said it a million times and I'll continue to beat this horse dead - Microsoft is awful for the gaming industry. It operates itself as an enterprise software company, which is the very essence of enshittification. How many times has Microsoft tried to rugpull its own customers? We just saw them do this recently with their plan to double the cost of Xbox Live Gold. That backfired, but showing their intent to do so should have been enough for the fanbase - instead I see barely anyone talking about this.
And now they decide to drop this news after business hours on a Tuesday, with prices going into effect within hours for anyone with lapsed subs. That's not the kind of thing a confident market leader does.
Its not. Its garbage at this moment.
The value not worth it. 20$ is alot of money. Might as well get PC gamepass and transition to PC only.
I know it seems like PC Game Pass is now some kind of secret value. You'd think it would be like Steam, but a subscription. Turns out the service itself is absolute ass. I subbed a few years back with the initial GPU deal and stacked like 2 or 3 years for very little cost. It was worth it for me to try things out at minimal expense, but by the end of my trial I even though the low price I paid was too much.
The problem is that GPU uses Windows Store games, and they're awful. The app itself and the selection of games is tied to Windows updates. If you are on a more stable channel or defer updates for any reason, you won't get the latest games. Even better - when you do update, often times there will be problems installing or launching the games! Even worse, controller support sucks. My experience with Halo:MCC was the worst - they released the games on PCGP individually and I had to redownload the app, uninstall and reinstall multiple times in order to get things working. A couple times I needed to run shell commands to delete and resync the Windows Store cache. This is not a big deal for me and probably many of you, but if I'm a normie paying a sub and have to fucking battle my OS just to access the games I'm subbing for, I'm out. it felt like I went backward in time to PC gaming of the 90s and early 2000s where it was downright painful to get things working. Not worth the money, just buy what you want when it goes on sale from Steam.