Pretty much every good new thing introduced these days inevitably goes to shit at some point, so I might as well enjoy it while it lasts.
Comment on Microsoft's £1/$1 Xbox Game Pass offer cut from a month to 14 days
echo64@lemmy.world 10 months agoWhen it reaches $15/20 a month it’ll already be too late.
It’s the exact same model that ruined all the other entertainment industries.
- Offer a subscription for next to nothing, funded by vc money/microsoft infinite money buckrts. The industry doesn’t mind because people are still buying things on cd/dvd/bluray so it’s just extra money for them.
- Oh no, everyone now just subscribes to the super cheap subscription, and the industry can’t afford to produce content just for spotify/netflix/gamepass
- Every content owner pulls content from the incumbent subscription service, starts their own, and you can’t buy the content for money anymore.
- Turns out $15 a month isn’t enough to pay for everything the industry usually makes, content lowers in quality, prices go up. Everyone loses.
Paying into subscription services now is a good deal for you, but it’s gonna ruin everything just like it did everywhere else.
jedibob5@lemmy.world 10 months ago
echo64@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Or, don’t support the thing killing the industry. I was trying to point that out. That you’re enjoying the good times now, but in doing so you’re actively pushing the industry into the same hellhole that others became.
jedibob5@lemmy.world 10 months 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@lemmy.world 10 months 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.
pavlov@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I think it’s interesting that this isn’t working as well in the pc world. Epic giving away games for free doesn’t seem to be affecting sales numbers on steam (thinking of how incredibly well Baldurs Gate 3 is selling). I can’t imagine Xbox games not on game pass are selling as well as they used to. I’m sure there’s impacts I’m not seeing, but on the surface it looks less successful.
dan1101@lemm.ee 10 months ago
It’s funny, my Steam games are like physical items out on my desk where I can see them every day, every time I turn on my computer. The free games I claim on Epic are like physical items in a drawer somewhere, that’s the Epic Games client. Not quite sure what I have in that drawer until I open it and search through it.