What’s Even The Point Of Xbox Game Pass Now?

Between a larger industry trend toward risk-averse development and indie devs reporting that deals for the service are drying up, Game Pass is starting to feel potentially purposeless.

[Futureshark]

The whole thing started to stagnate a long time ago, it was the introduction of BC that kept it going with the odd release here and there.
Nothing like that to fall back on now.

[CrimsonWing69]

It’ll probably turn into Xbox Live Gold and get 3 free old games a month.

[Jingsing]

The problem is whether it is Gold or Game Pass or any similar service they all become stagnant and run out of stuff you give you. It was a foolish thing in the first place. The best model is the one that has been around since the start, buy the games you actually want to own and play. Restaurants used to do all you can eat until people found out it is just stupid when you can't eat everything or don't even want to try. It is a fake of premise making you think you are getting a bargain when you aren't.

[CrimsonWing69]

Yea but that “original model” isn’t working, either. Things like FF7 Rebirth not effected by Gamepass aren’t selling enough. I mean a lot of games, in general, just aren’t selling enough for a ROI.

You’ll get something like Helldivers 2 that’s GaaS and sells a ton, the industry looks at that and says, “well shit none of these traditional games are selling, let’s do what “they’re” doing!,” and then you’ll have a flood of the market with derivative games and GaaS to boot.

So, then there’s also talks of raising the price of gaming even more or raising the cost of services to make up for it. I really wouldn’t be surprised if we hit a game crash at some point. I’ll tell you this, if games hit $100 a pop I will only buy them on sale. That’s just crazy, especially in this economy.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

@CrimsonWing69,
The games industry at the moment is pretty crazy as it is, I would not be surprised if you saw more studio closures, higher prices, and other attempts to nickle and dime us. I've heard some say a crash is impossible, but with the quality of titles being pushed out and the amount of finical flops we're seeing, I think we're really close to having one.

[Smellsforfree]

Game Pass isn't for me. I'm not looking for the best value in gaming, I'm looking for the best experiences in gaming.

[medman]

I also am looking for the best experienced in gaming. I own a ps5 and series x but unfortunately in this ps5/series x/s gen, I don't feel I'm getting much of what I was looking forward to. I thought for sure 60 fps would be locked in with these new machines, but we are for the most part still stuck with 30fps for most titles. And that is despite the fact so many of these current gen titles are actually cross gen titles. So many years in and we still don't know what some of Sony's big teams are working on. But don't worry....Sony is going to attempt to sell an upgraded, more powerful ps5 so we can better enjoy all these cross gen titles. This gen so far has been a damp squib, imo.

[Chocoburger]

Sony first party cross gen games period is over at this point, third party cross gen will continue for smaller games, and indie cross gen is perfectly fine, no need to make them current gen exclusive. Sony are not going to sell us a PS5 Pro just to play cross gen games.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I couldn't agree more, this gen has been more or less a bust compared to the previous ones, Nintendo seems to be the only bucking the trend, but they offer a different experience, more-so now that ever.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I feel like they shot themselves in the foot, it's expensive for Microsoft to maintain and they need a steady stream of high quality games to feed into the service. With the closure of all these Microsoft/Xbox studios, it just signals that Game Pass wasn't as profitable as they lead people to believe, if we have a video game crash, this is probably going to be one of several linchpins that causes it.