Gamepass is a super-obvious telegraphed trap for enshittification. Offer a good value (it is, for the time being), get people dependent on it, then pull the rug out.

How many times have we already seen this?

Isn't this an old strategy of microsoft? Dump shitload of money into a market, then once you captured a significant portion start the enshittification.

Game pass might be the best deal in gaming, but you are selling your soul to the devil for it. It will ultimately harm gaming, especially developers long term. We should reject game pass.

Yet another example of:

C Suite / Upper Management doesn't listen when a seasoned software engineer of some kind points out an extremely obvious medium/long-run problem with the business model they're being asked to either functionally invent, or massively contribute to.

Sooo... Gamepass is one of the services that is driving up the price of the non-gamepass versions of those games, right? They've got to recoup costs somehow, and then the rest of the industry takes that as an opportunity to consider these inflated prices as the new baseline.

I think it was Netflix that went through a period of releasing movies in cinemas and putting it on streaming on day one.

It was such a resounding success that they no longer do that.

I guess MS has deep enough pockets to not realise their folly yet. PSN Premium/Extra isn't as good value from a consumer point of view, but it also hasn't killed their own console. What that cannibalises is the "wait for a sale" people, who would likely have paid £20 for a game a year or two down the line. I think that's a more manageable than losing all the day one £65 sales.

Game pass is good for one month and playing like 3 single player games. But it’s really been the final nail, last gasp whatever you want to call it for XBOX. Its not sustainable, has stalled out and larger developers have had enough of getting f**** over.

This has been so obvious from the beginning, and now that it’s too late is when they starting to complain.

backlog gamepass would be hype. Like, this whole thing is shit and old game should probably cycle into the public domain; if a corp put work into keeping old games playable, how cool would that be?

Maybe it says more about me than about game pass, but even at 5€ a month it would be significantly more money than I spend on games every year.

Not that I couldn't afford it, but I mostly play games that are at least 5 to 10 years old, either on second-hand physical copies or heavily discounted sales/keyshops. The most recent game I've bought is Elden Ring, even then only recently because I found a cheap physical copy.