I don’t think that quite fits when we’re talking about the primary (really only) benefit. PS Plus and Game Pass Essential are still required for online (and cloud saves for PS plus), but neither really market themselves on that. The catalog of games is what they’re sold on as subscriptions. “No extra cost” felt fair 10 years ago, but for Xbox not since they merged Game Pass & Gold or for Sony not since they merged PS Plus and PS Now.
For example, “EA Play at no extra cost” felt accurate when Game Pass Ultimate added EA play without changing the price. The same thing for cloud gaming when it was added without changing the price and was still in beta. Now both feel like advertised standard benefits to sell the service. If EA Play was taken away from the $30 GPU then Microsoft would have to lower the price or deal with angry gamers. Cloud is part of every tier now and out of beta so it’s just a natural Xbox offering now.
“At no added/extra cost” marketing wise really only works in that temporary sense. Especially for free PS Plus games. If it’s been part of the service for like over a decade then it’s not anymore “no added cost” than it is “free”. It’s just the product you bought.
Really customers shouldn’t even be thinking in these terms though. It’s peak marketing brainwashing. The product or service is either worth the price to you for what they offer or it isn’t. There’s always a cost. A gamer (customer) getting defensive to the point of justifying what they pay for their product/service online in a long rant post is something else. Really just the sign of a cultist. I’ll defend my choice for gaming on Xbox as my preferred platform, but I’ll never feel the need to justify my purchase itself. If I am then I’ll know it’s time to take that money and put it elsewhere. I’m especially not going to defend prices when I myself paid less than the price increase. Like I’m locked into Game Pass Ultimate for less than $20 a month, I’m not going to tell everyone why it’s totes amazing that it’s now $30 for new subs (I don’t think the price is unreasonable for what it offers, but I don’t think I’d pay that myself). Really when it was infecting every Xbox YouTube video and post I just kept replying for people to shut up and stop paying for it or downgrade if they wanted Microsoft to care. Anyway, that’s like also the thing: I’m assuming this person who is acting like a fan boy bought the PS5 Pro day one & has been locked into PS Plus for some time. What WAS worth it to them might not still be worth it for others. It’s a dumb rant in general.
This may have an awful impact on consoles thinking about it now if PS5 sales fall down significantly after this with Xbox already not selling too hot but we’ll see.
The “Master Race” thing is a joke/insult PC gamers adopted, it’s all tongue-in-cheek. I’m pretty sure it started from Ben “Yhatzee” Crowshaw who got popular doing those snarky/critical video game reviews who used the term to make fun of PC gamers acting superior. This was ages ago at the height of “angry” video game reviewers.
If that’s what needs to happen. End of the day, current situation isn’t due to console manufacturers, but at the same time, chasing the power crown has also had somewhat of an negative effect. Do we really need new systems every 7 years? When finances are bad all around the globe, shouldn’t console manufacturers rethink their strategy?
Switch 2, as much as I hated it at first, seems to have the perfect blend of tech and form factor right now. DLSS helps it out, it can act as a home or portable console, can play newer games (albeit at lower fidelity but still), and is priced at the limit I think of what casuals would be willing to pay.
MS and Sony really need to rethink their strategy in terms of offering something affordable for the masses if they want to succeed. I personally have stretched my PCs over time (thanks to upgradable parts), have built myself a plex server using old parts to save on subscription services (I still buy vinyls and 4k blu-ray but subscriptions were killing me) and there is a high chance I’ll let Gamepass lapse next year and just focus on the backlog for a while. All that and I consider myself well off, so I can only imagine how it is for lower income people, which should normally be the target for console gaming.
if consoles stop being for the masses, good luck supporting hundreds of studios in the current f2p landscape. Things are not looking good!
I think Xbox figured it out this generation. Two SKUs at launch (budget and premium) with no mid gen pro model. I’d even say that tech wise the Series S and X have gotten better with age. Or at least people aren’t complaining about anything holding back gaming as much anymore. They’ve both held up fantastically and the Series X really makes a Pro model look redundant (especially at the price and how close out to next gen they would’ve had to launch it). They really just need to figure out the actual marketing part (including production and sales). Though we’ll see with Helix what the actual pricing strategy turns out to be. By all accounts (rumors) a $300 budget launch console is gone and reduced to atoms.
I mean we already know the death of consoles is inevitable. Unless something major changes to bring new audiences in. All they can really do is raise prices to offset rising costs. Especially when they have shareholders and need to increase profit margins and overall revenue. And, yeah, they’ll slowly just lose relevance as their existing audience is priced out. We saw some of that last year. But hardware sales are long last the peak for each console maker. Like even the Switch combined the handheld and home console market for Nintendo to revitalize them, but they sold more when both the Wii and DS were over a hundred million. It’s a very protective strategy focused on making existing customers as valuable to the business as possible and they’re fine with raising the cost of entry because to them new people weren’t going to buy the console anyway (so either people already own a PS5 and are unaffected or people are locked into the ecosystem and willing to pay more to upgrade and keep their libraries).
Microsoft’s plan is clearly to leverage windows (it’s already bigger than anyone console and has growth prospects) and converge it with Xbox in some way to both future the console while regaining footing in windows gaming. Then there’s also Cloud Gaming for super casuals and probably to hopefully reach the general public that consoles never quite did. Nintendo is displaying well that they’ll control costs as much as possible while also raising prices. Sony confuses me a tad. Seemingly they’ve given up on reaching new audiences on PC, so maybe they’ll go full Nintendo. But that’ll be harder for them because they’ve built themselves on offering high quality and expensive narrative driven cinematic like exclusives and offering a super powerful system. I honestly think they’ll just coast off of their loyal existing user base until they can’t.
Lol also PC did have one of the most legendary reviewers ever in Charlie Brooker.
Used to rush to buy PC Zone every month as a teenager to read his mad sweary surreal reviews - Black Mirror wasn’t a surprise to anyone who’d read them.
Console magazines always took themselves so seriously like it was a specialist hobby for auteurs, while PC ones were much less serious, had fun and fed into the general chilled vibe around PC at the time
I wasn’t aware of the origin of the term. That’s actually interesting. That said, I’ve only ever seen it used in a serious manner, making fun of “console peasants” etc.
To be clear, all of this nonsense is about “fanboys” only. Most gamers are normal people enjoying their hobby, regardless of platform.
I remember Game Pass being called Peasant Pass for a while by the PlayStation crowd…
Condescension is pretty much a cornerstone of the console wars - I admit I did used to find it funny to see comment sections where PS fanboys would be piling on Xbox gamers only to be called peasants in turn by the PC crowd, was like a royal rumble
Game pass only gets hate from that crowd because of the company who made it. I’m pretty sure the only reason they’re mad is because Sony didn’t create game pass.
Well that is the gist of it. It did come about to make fun of the fanboys touting PC superiority. I guess it is sort of like how movie characters that are satire on toxic personalities become popular and admired unironically.
