Earlier in the year they removed the trial offer. Now it’s returned, but worse than before.

  • @jedibob5
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    21 year ago

    Even at Gamepass’ highly aggressive price, it seems clear that it’s not killing off one-time game purchases. Unlike how Netflix was able to destroy Blockbuster and greatly reduce the prevalence of physical media, Gamepass lacks any critical convenience advantage compared to its competition. Steam and other digital storefronts have already destroyed the market for physical game media, so Gamepass’ competitive advantage can only extend to price and selection.

    You’re right in that game streaming services will probably implode on themselves as the model proves unsustainable in the presence of competitors, but I think the effect will be more localized than what’s happening with TV and movie services. The available selection will likely never reach the immense size needed to seriously pose a threat to Steam before collapsing, so I expect a return to status quo to be much easier than with TV/movie streaming.

    And at the end of the day, while I try to make my principled moral stands as a consumer where I can, life is too damn short and the ills of capitalism too all-encompassing for it to be worth it to me in this case. AAA gaming has been on a slow, gradual backslide long before Gamepass came into the picture, so it’s not like the success or failure of game streaming is going to change its long-term prospects that much. Might as well save some money while I can.

    • @echo64
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      11 year ago

      There was literally a developer that wasn’t bringing something out on xbox, it might have been dlc? their reasoning was that they didn’t want to spend the time porting to xbox because no one buys content anymore on xbox.

      so no

      Even at Gamepass’ highly aggressive price, it seems clear that it’s not killing off one-time game purchases.

      is not at all true, we have evidence to the opposite of that.

      • Aielman15
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        21 year ago

        I think you are talking of Furi. The developers shared how many units were sold on which platforms (link to Vice article), which showed that Xbox just wasn’t worth working on because it wouldn’t recoup the costs. For reference, the game was already a few years old at that point and MS refused to put it on GamePass, which would’ve hurt the game’s visibility even more.