Xbox & Microsoft News/Discussion

[DjchunKfunK]

The thing that strikes me as different is that Sony cultivated those studios for a long time to the point that when they were acquired a lot of people went “wait, they didn’t own them already?”. They didn’t feel like they were taking anything away from MS since 99% of those studios releases were only on PS. MS on the other hand just said point the money cannon at the successful thing and build a wall round it! That left people looking forward to a Starfield or a TES that maybe can’t afford a second console up the poopy river so it tastes a whole lot more bitter.

Bungie is the outlier but that still seems like a bloody moronic buy to me anyway since they paid way too much and left them to operate almost completely independently.

It's a slightly different approach but at some point Sony would have been taking games away from other platforms when paying for exclusivity. Exclusives are ultimately bad any way you slice them, doesn't matter if they were announced for another system originally or not.

[Mantis]

Debatable whether exclusives are defacto a bad thing. Some games wouldn't get made at all if console platform owners didn't pay the studios for development. Even if they're just a third party and not directly owned by Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo, I don't think it's unreasonable to want exclusivity on a game that you've paid development and marking costs for.

[Wrathbone]

The thing that strikes me as different is that Sony cultivated those studios for a long time to the point that when they were acquired a lot of people went “wait, they didn’t own them already?”. They didn’t feel like they were taking anything away from MS since 99% of those studios releases were only on PS. MS on the other hand just said point the money cannon at the successful thing and build a wall round it! That left people looking forward to a Starfield or a TES that maybe can’t afford a second console up the poopy river so it tastes a whole lot more bitter.

Nah, that’s something of a revisionist history. MS worked very closely with Bethesda from Oblivion onwards to the point where Todd Howard and Pete Hines were fawning over the Xbox 360 in interviews while barely mentioning PS or Sony at all. They were partners long before the acquisition. Their BGS games on PS were at best an afterthought / cash grab and at worst outright broken. How anyone was surprised at them being bought by MS is beyond me.

[Animalmother]

Microsoft thinking about releasing Xbox exclusives on other platforms, maybe? Gears of War on PS5

[Alan]

My theory is that after the first party being quite floppy MS have told XBox to start making money back on all the billions they've dropped trying to throttle Sonys sales. Ironically the best way to do that is to use Sonys install base :p

That or they think the best way to punish Sony is to give them Starfield.

[Animalmother]

[DjchunKfunK]

I think most of it is conjecture and the worst of internet sleuthing.

[DjchunKfunK]

Well it's long been expected and it finally happened, Game Pass is getting a bunch of price rises. Game Pass for Console is going away and will become Game Pass Standard, it will cost $14.99 and give you access to Xbox Live and Xbox's back catalogue but not first party day-one releases. Those already subscribed to Game Pass for Console will keep their subscription but will only be able to stack up to 13 months from 12th September meaning eventually it will run out and you will need to change to one of the other subscriptions. Alongside this change Game Pass Ultimate is increasing in price to £14.99/$16.99 and Game Pass PC is going up to £9.99/$11.99 a month.

Finally Game Pass Core (what was Gold) will see it's annual price increase to £55.99/$74.99 but the monthly price stays the same at £6.99/$9.99. All these price rises come into effect September 12.I'm sure there will be a bunch of moaning about this and "Xbox is dead" but the prices are still very competitive, especially when stacked up against EA and Ubisoft's offerings. I think perhaps the one place where you could say they are possibly short changing players is with Game Pass on Console as you go from paying £8.99 to £14.99 if you want to keep the same access you had before, as you will need to upgrade to Ultimate. At least you can stack for a year.

[Raid]

I think in isolation, it's still a good deal, but the issue is that subscription prices are increasing across the board and for many people they do eventually have to choose the one they'll miss the least. I have 5 media subscriptions; Game Pass, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Spotify, and I think all of them have gone up by two or three quid per month over the last year. That's the price of one additional subscription, and I'm willing to bet these increases will become annual if they aren't already. This isn't a Microsoft-specific problem of course, and I still think Game Pass is the best deal out of the five I use, but this will eat into their subscriber base regardless of how good a deal it is, and naturally this lowered income will be passed on to the consumer.

[Sly Boots]

At this point I'm basically keeping Disney+ because of the kids and GamePass because they like playing Minecraft with their friends. I do occasionally play a GP game but it's become quite rare, enough so that when they lose interest in Minecraft I'll let my sub lapse and just buy a month here and there if something releases on the platform I like the look of.

Disney+ goes as soon as they lose interest in the animated films there.

[DjchunKfunK]

I'm locked in for another year with the Gold trick from a few years back so it doesn't really effect me in terms of price but I love it as a service. Played a fair few games over the years that I probably wouldn't have bothered with otherwise. The Xbox first party stuff is mostly an added bonus for me.

[Animalmother]

Got to make that $69 billion back somehow.