Comment on Xbox invests big into indies, signs Game Pass deals with over 50 studios
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 1 day agoYeah it’s straight up the big tech playbook. Undermine competition with low subscription prices and a lot of content. Lure in developers with deals that are too good to be true. And then once the customers are invested in using GamePass and stop buying games, increase subscription prices. And since MS is by then the gatekeeper to the market they don’t have to pay out so much to the developers anymore. It’s basically what Uber has done, once they killed the taxi market in a city they increased prices and lowered payouts to drivers. And since customers are used to those ride hailing apps the normal taxi market will never bounce back and drivers are basically forced to work with Uber or change jobs.
Also once Microsoft has a large chunk of the market in hand they basically decide before hand which games become a success or not instead of letting the market decide. So yeah games critical of their customers like the Israeli government will probably never get on GamePass and thus never reach a large audience. Will be seeing way more censorship than what we’ve seen with Steam recently.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 1 day ago
I hate Game Pass. It’s a poisoned well. If it’s a continued success it won’t just turn games into subscription service content (meaning we’ll own our games even less. Anyone thinking MS will continue selling games separately I guarantee if Game Pass sticks around for the next decade there will be “only on Game Pass” games) but it will become a locking mechanism for whatever MS new gaming OS will be. MS will make sure Game Pass won’t work on Linux so MS could continue having OS dominance in the gaming space. And of course the service will eventually enshittify because $$$.
The future of Game Pass is a future nobody wants. Paying for an overpriced service to play a curated list of games you can’t own on a machine that will track everything you do and feed you ads every chance it gets.
Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
As far as I’m aware GamePass is already Xbox+Windows exclusive because it uses the Microsoft Store on PC
Goodeye8@piefed.social 1 day ago
I thought there was some way but I guess I was mistaken.