Support NeoGAF

[Fahdis]

Lmao, feel bad for people who have to pay for any kind of paywalls. Oh wait, we fed these idiots for a decade and now we are complaining.

 

[Kerotan]

Lol

Great PR this for the already struggling xbox. I'm just shocked they did this in the covid pandemic. Couldn't pick a worst time to look greedy.

 

[wachie]

God bless Good Guy Spencer.

 

[fast_taker]

$300 a year for a subscription service though? While it will have games you'll want to play, it won't ever have all, or even most.

What happens when other big publishers start locking their games behind similar subscription services? It could quickly become unfeasible to play all the games you want, because you'll be paying for all these subscriptions.

I don’t understand why people want that future.

The 300 price tag is a mistake. The guy who suggested that number wasn't aware that gold subscription is included in the game pass subscription. Having said that you can get game pass for console (gold included) with 10$/month or the game pass ultimate (play on xbox, pc, ea access, gold and play on cloud access included) with 13$/month.

 

[Elios83]

"Don't worry about the financials, just enjoy Game Pass" said someone called Phil a few months ago.
This is Gold Live but just wait until the investement phase for GP is over as well and they have reached their internal user base target and you'll see how even the GP price will be increased to 15-19$ monthly.

 

[Knitted Knight]

What do you mean?

Someone out there will get it...

 

[Senua]

Xbox gamers are the OG suckers right? Happily paying for online play when PC and even Playstation had it for free, obv PS followed suit when they saw how easy it was the lead the sheep. Luckily PC gamers do not fall for such tricks. Poor sheep, i have empathy for your fallibility

It's time to hop on over Xbox dudes, all your games any much, much more will await you! glory!!

wait, ignore that last one

 

[driqe]

"Don't worry about the financials, just enjoy Game Pass" said someone called Phil a few months ago.
Just wait until the investement phase for GP is over as well and they have reached their internal user base target and you'll see how even the GP price will be increased to 15-19$ monthly.

If increasing gold means they won't have to increase the price of Gamepass then that's fine by me

 

[Elios83]

If increasing gold means they won't have to increase the price of Gamepass then that's fine by me

Game Pass price will be increased in 2022 when they'll have actual exclusive games to release on it, it's just a matter of time.
What MS is doing with with GP is a well known business model, right now they're in the investement phase, remember when Amazon was giving away Prime subscriptions at 9.99€ and now it costs 36€.... Once the fishing net is full and they will have to finance 20 studios developing games for it, price will increase to 15 or even 20$ monthly and it will be announced pretty much like this, without many ceremonies.

 

[lachesis]

Well, with anything in life... price will go up, not down. However, 100% increase is actually very damning.
I purchased Live gold 3 year amount at the launch of XSX and converted to Game Pass Ultimate till Nov 2023 - but I guess that loop hole is effectively closed off now for any new comers for good... (now it comes out to be around 10 bucks, instead of 5 bucks a month. Still some 33% savings, but not as much - 66% savings)... and I am not feeling good about it because I wish other new users would experience same deal like I have.

At this point I am not committed to renew anything - I may just stop the renewal the game pass ultimate, and maybe re-join at console level, if it stays at 10 bucks a month... or wait for any Black Friday deals on Game Pass Ultimate for coming years and extend manually as cheap as possible.

I do think Game Pass is a great service - especially it allows me to play and enjoy a game that I may have overlooked or wasn't sure enough to purchase... like several indy games, and past AAA games - though but not too sure if I want to commit for $15 per month - especially I don't really care much about MS's 1st party games that much. People who love their 1st party game, it may be a different story. To be fair though, I actually I may just cut off other subscriptions like Netflix/Disney Plus etc before Game Pass. It seems like I spend more time with Game Pass than Netflix and Disney Plus combined. I can just rejoin Netflix/Disney Plus when there's a show that I want to binge by monthly basis.

 

[SNG32]

Microsoft will scale back on this there will be to much backlash on this.

 

[balls of snow]

If I were sony I would drop the yearly psplus by 10 usd and have an order of magnitude of additional games in the psplus collections.

 

[quest]

If increasing gold means they won't have to increase the price of Gamepass then that's fine by me

All I know is your not increasing market share doing 100% price increase. This will end up making gamepass cost more by selling less consoles. I can't believe anyone at Microsoft outside the bean counters thought this was a good idea. This is going to backfire in the end. Anyone on the fence is going Sony now.

 

[Captain Toad]

Microsoft will scale back on this there will be to much backlash on this.

I doubt it. They know what they're doing when they DOUBLE the price of their subscription service.

 

[Dabaus]

Gaming Forte's Gamestop?

Gaming Forte's strong MS bias along with his destiny rants makes other wise good podcasts unlistenable.

 

[driqe]

Game Pass price will be increased in 2022 when they'll have actual exclusive games to release on it, it's just a matter of time.
What MS is doing with with GP is a well known business model, right now they're in the investement phase, remember when Amazon was giving away Prime subscriptions at 9.99€ and now it costs 36€.... Once the fishing net is full and they will have to finance 20 studios developing games for it, price will increase to 15 or even 20$ monthly and it will be announced pretty much like this, without many ceremonies.

 

[Kerotan]

I doubt it. They know what they're doing when they DOUBLE the price of their subscription service.

Hopefully parents catch wind of this and when buying a next gen console choose the ps5.

 

[renzolama]

Game Pass is totally sustainable long term you guys, don't worry about the numbers

Tell me more uncle spin doctor Phil, tell me more!

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

So many good thoughts here. It really is a huge PR blunder. Instead of ”OMG, my Xbox Live sub just got upgraded to Game Pass Ultimate! MS rulez!” they got ”Wut?! 100% price increase on Xbox Live!? That’s it I’m going with Playstation instead now!”.

Or from what I've been seeing, lots of people just deciding to go with Gamepass on PC instead. At least, from a couple streams I saw this morning on the news (Xbox-centric podcasts btw).

Again it's not even so much the price increase itself but them just throwing it out there with nothing to soften the blow. That's critically important. The way this is rolling out has shades of 2013 in it, i.e there's potentially negative leaks coming out and Microsoft just comes out and confirms them with nothing else in terms of good news to pair it with (or better yet, just do what Sony does: don't even mention the negative news at all and hope it gets buried in some good news you put the focus on instead).

This feels like the first major blunder for MS gaming in 2021...hopefully it's the last.

It will eventually become free. What MS wants to do is to retire Gold and make as many people as possible to move to GPU instead.

You have to agree though that this is an artificial way of moving people to GPU though. Handicapping one service to simply make the other seem better in comparison is usually a very poor way of trying to get people to where you want them to be. GPU should have enough value proposition of its own merit to draw people over, XBL Gold shouldn't need to suffer for that in terms of a price increase.

Keep in mind you still need XBL Gold to play FTP games, and on PC you don't have to play for online at all. Microsoft at the very least could've paired this increase in price with an announcement of online play for FTP games no longer requiring Gold, effective immediately. Now if they decide to announce that some other random day it'll look like a panic response to backlash from the price increase.

Managing optics, it's something Xbox division really needs to hone down on mastering, 'cuz this ain't it chief.

 

[sublimit]

I just realized that this is a 100% increase for a yearly subscription. Holy shit.

Edit: or is it not? How much a yearly subscription to XBLG costed before?

 

[keraj37]

Oh I need to cancell sub then.

 

[Sushen]

Once my 3 year GPU sub ends in 30 some month later, I'll cancel it and only subscribe when enough games I want is stacked up.

It's the same strategy that I plan on doing with Disney ÷, once the founder sub expires.

Binge watching and playing will be a new norm as I have cycles with my entertainment

 

[Hitchyhero]

Bad move by MS imo. Gamepass is great value but this is essentially trying to make users move over to GP.

60 is not worth it for XBL. There's no dedicated servers for games, and games for gold is pretty naff these days.

 

[3liteDragon]

 

[GHG]

Yeah trolls

I remember the same thing being said when polls were done in 2013 and we all know how that turned out.

 

[Dr. Samuel Hayden]

 

[Papacheeks]

No, we have seen it with Netflix, now Disney+ increased theirs and it's barely a year old. No way they can invest in 20 studios plus the 7.5 billion on bethesda and have games come out on gamepass without increasing their prices at some point. ANd the speed at which they are moving is way faster than amazon/netflix.

You do the math.

 

[SNG32]

I doubt it. They know what they're doing when they DOUBLE the price of their subscription service.

It would make sense for them to incorporate gold into gpu and remove the paywall to free-to-play games which I can see them doing. If not your better off getting a fucking PC then the Xbox Console.

 

[TBiddy]

Using Twitter pools as proof of anything is idiotic.

Almost as idiotic as this move from Microsoft, and that says a lot.

 

[Senua]

I get it! This news is almost as shitty as Friends

 

[aries_71]

Sorry for the off-topic, but that beast is fantastic!

 

[DeepEnigma]

 

[Dabaus]

Look how Jeff runs cover for Microsoft. Shills going to shill. "Like many of you i have game pass." You can spot the astroturfers by their talking points.

 

[Vae_Victis]

If increasing gold means they won't have to increase the price of Gamepass then that's fine by me

They are increasing Gold because they want people to start moving to GamePass and actually pay the listing price for it. And the price of Gamepass won't be "increased", it will be brought up to what it was always meant to be once this years-long "new customers' promotion" everybody has been enjoying ends.

• What we had so far was phase 1, when GamePass has an average price but there are "tricks" *wink wink* to get it for less in practice, so people get used to associating it with "great value".
• This is the beginning of phase 2, when the "tricks" start disappearing and you actually have to pay for GamePass' listing price. But it's all fine, since it's such "great value".
• Phase 3 will begin when enough Gold member will have moved on to GamePass, then Gold will become obsolete, it will be rolled into GamePass completely and any further price changes will affect GamePass directly.

I frankly stopped caring what Microsoft does, I just hope the backlash is bad enough that Sony won't get any funny ideas with Plus.

 

[Derktron]

I'm so fucking happy that even fanboys of Xbox are even calling out Microsoft for this price increase. Seeing this just pushes me away from their ecosystem even more.

Edit: "Well some"

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Story time boys and girls.

When Jim Ryan took over at Playstation I know for a fact Phil and Mike Ybarra cracked open an expensive bottle of Scotch and celebrated that he would run Playstation into the ground.

I have defended a lot of what Xbox has done over the years simply because of how much Mike and I gamed together in the past, not so much recently.

But honestly this is just the death knell for me, forcing people to pay $120 a year to play "free" games.

I honestly love my series X I think its a pretty cool piece of tech but this from this point forward it is back to my PS5 full time.

 

[Derktron]

Story time boys and girls.

When Jim Ryan took over at Playstation I know for a fact Phil and Mike Ybarra cracked open an expensive bottle of Scotch and celebrated that he would run Playstation into the ground.

I have defended a lot of what Xbox has done over the years simply because of how much Mike and I gamed together in the past, not so much recently.

But honestly this is just the death knell for me, forcing people to pay $120 a year to play "free" games.

I honestly love my series X I think its a pretty cool piece of tech but this from this point forward it is back to my PS5 full time.

I'm up to the point when this whole ordeal dies down with the lack of consoles not being available, I will switch back to Playstation full time and not look back at Xbox. I'll play their games on PC when it looks good but this is shaky and this is what they always wanted to do. Sneaky money-hungry bastards.

 

[Blond]

Imagine playing with aim bots and hackers all day.

You don’t pay a whore for sex. You, pay her to leave.

Same idea.

It’s not worth the grief it can cause because it’s “free”.

You must really suck

C'mon guys, keep paying for the games passes they will never raise the prices astronomically when they will be able to do so and you will not have any other mean to play.

Why are people so dumb.

Gold should be free like on PC it costs barely nothing to the platform holder that is still making huge profits on it through the fees they receive for every game sold.

Yep! People don’t even realize there’s portions of the windows source code that show on some level it’s going to have subscriptions to use it. But don’t worry, when Gamepass reaches 30-40 dollars a month they’ll still be talking about how it’s a good value to play 9 month old games and indie titles they play for 2 hours and never touch again just to have a talking point to say why it’s worth paying 500 dollars a year on rentals they don’t own.

 

[Mahadev]

So in 5 years the console costs 500 + 600 = 1100 dollars. Buahahhahaha what kind of sucker will buy this trash?

 

[Hitchyhero]

I'm a big advocate of Gamepass, and even when my 3 year sub expires..... £12.99 per month is still completely worth it to me.

I just don't get this price increase for live though. That is not worth it at all and anyone who JUST wanted to play with XBL and not GP is getting shafted.

 

[RoboFu]

Xbox gamers are the OG suckers right? Happily paying for online play when PC and even Playstation had it for free, obv PS followed suit when they saw how easy it was the lead the sheep. Luckily PC gamers do not fall for such tricks. Poor sheep, i have empathy for your fallibility

It's time to hop on over Xbox dudes, all your games any much, much more will await you! glory!!

wait, ignore that last one

Much higher price of admission to get perfprmance over a ps5 or XsX though.. and then there is EPIC game store exclusive buyouts ...

But hey, I might just stick with PC becaus eof this though.

 

[oldergamer]

Gamepass ultimate is a better value. what an odd thing to do.

 

[nikolino840]

I'm so fucking happy that even fanboys of Xbox are even calling out Microsoft for this price increase. Seeing this just pushes me away from their ecosystem even more.

Edit: "Well some"

Well becouse if there's someone like me that don't care...but yeah journalists and bloggers and youtubers yeah

 

[GHG]

So in 5 years the console costs 500 + 600 = 1100 dollars. Buahahhahaha what kind of sucker will buy this trash?

Best thing about it is that if you stick to gamepass then come the end of those 5 years you have nothing but a plastic box to show for it.

 

[Reallink]

MS don't 't want the poors buying $30 annual discount cards stinking up the Xbox's image. They'd rather have 10-15 million users paying the full $15+/mo in perpetuity than 25-30 million paying $2.50. Their infrastructure and hardware production costs will be much lower, and those derelicts only buy used games at Gamestop anyways. Why would Phil Spencer want to live there?

 

[Hendrick's]

I doubt it. They know what they're doing when they DOUBLE the price of their subscription service.

Yeah, it is obvious this is simply to push Gold users to Game Pass. Gold will be gone by the end of the year.

 

[nikolino840]

I remember the same thing being said when polls were done in 2013 and we all know how that turned out.

Twitter is the home of trolls (for videogames)

 

[Danteyke223]

Much higher price of admission to get perfprmance over a ps5 or XsX though.. and then there is EPIC game store exclusive buyouts ...

But hey, I might just stick with PC becaus eof this though.

Just get a VPN, switch your status to Argentina and enjoy the cheap prices of EGS. Jesus people really need to stop bitching about EGS all the time.

 

[GHG]

Twitter is the home of trolls (for videogames)

I'm not on twitter.

 

[KingdomHeartsFan]

Well becouse if there's someone like me that don't care...but yeah journalists and bloggers and youtubers yeah

And gamers...