Given that we experience almost yearly price hikes for subscription services like Netflix, because they’re beholden to shareholders and “numbers must always go up,” I was quite surprised today to learn that Microsoft was reducing the price of Xbox Gamepass.
And not a single sacrifice had to be made.
Gamepass had definitely been pushing past the boundary of what former cost-to-value ratio it held… in fact prior to the last price hike/the end of annual subs, I purchased as much time as allowed and was seriously considering just nixing the service when it ran out.
I still may, but a lower monthly price than before at least puts it back into consideration territory, I think. We’ll see how much I utilize GamePass over the next year or so.
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You’d think they would’ve compared the accounts who play a lot of CoD and the accounts who subscribe to Gamepass before they jacked up the Gamepass price with CoD as the justification.
How in time.for the Doom DLC, doesn’t?
I assume the dlc isn’t included in your sub, like most dlcs.
Well, I played the previous game and all the DLCs in Game Pass
For a moment, I considered bumping my subscription back up to Ultimate, but then I remembered why I dropped it in the first place (other than the price hike): I realised that all the games I wanted it for would end up on the lower tier a year or so after release anyway, by which time all the bugs would be fixed – its just the subscription service equivalent of the idiot tax of buying physical games on release for huge amounts of money for the privilege of doing the developer’s beta testing for them. (Obviously the situation for multiplayer… Read more »
it seems like the price drop is actually more than the cost of a new CoD game so it’s even a win for people who DO play it
Hey, we work really hard on CoD – but you’re absolutely right, there’s a ton of people who don’t place any value in it. I’m glad this year’s is only being ‘sold’ to people who want it.
The thousands of people who got laid off so numbers could go up without touching the AI or executive budgets were the sacrifice.
It might be worth considering making an exception and posting these topical one-off comics in real time instead of delaying them by months since they lose some relevance when delayed and that gap is only going to get wider as time goes on.
I’m the wrong type of gamer to be interested in things like Gamepass. I get 1-2 new games every year, most of them are $20-40 smaller scale games, and then I’ll play the games I’ve been playing for a decade.
I stopped playing CoD when they shifted from historical to fantasy football gun porn. I guess shooting nazis was alienating a section of America?
Wolfenstein always did nazi-killing better anyway.
The “Nazis won ww2” game? I’d put in a different category.
World at War says what?
Okay, this is the downside of being a free reader… Jokes are just outdated by months by the time you’re reading them.
Surely it’s funny now if it was funny then.
The downside is you now have a subscription service with a mediocre selection of games that could leave the service at any time and nothing kept when you end your sub. It’s just burning money and anyone who thinks it’s good value is deluding themselves.
It’s still worth it to many. I did bump down to Premium once all my extra days ran out. The short: I had bought a new laptop last year so I got a couple months of Gamepass Ultimate free that I activated just before the price hike. During that time, I made a list of everything on Ultimate from “Must Play” to “vaguely curious” and I banged out as many “trials” as I could before time was up. With the price reduction, I considered bumping back up BUT, having knocked out so much of the ultimate tier, I didn’t see… Read more »
so literally 0 downside