PlayStation Now was a thing long before Game Pass came along. Just shows you what nonsense it all is.
Speaking of Playstation Now started as streaming only (their solution to backwards compatibility), $20 a month, and even let you play Playstation games on a Sony TV or PC (streaming) with no console required. Funny how it was justā¦. ignored. Not bashed to death and made fun of. PS fans now actually seem to have forgotten it ever even existed.
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Yup, they bought on live and gaikai (I think those were the names) to push their cloud initiative back in the day.
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PS Now AND Plus. And I donāt say this as a bad thing, subscriptions have been a big help providing affordable access to a variety of great games, if Sony were the reason for that, then thank you Sony. Dudes against subscriptions are elitist assholes who get most of their games for free from their industry links and donāt think about people who can barely afford one $60-70 game a month
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Now was more about gatekeeping that technology from being accessed by other companies than actually take it seriously to its full potential, as even to this day you still canāt play PS5 games through cloud on any hardware other than PS5 and Portal, correct me if Iām wrong. Which is baffling because the point of cloud would be to make access to people who canāt buy a console or PC.
The main argument I see is fatigue (understandable honestly) and ānot owning anythingā. The latter is kinda frustrating because people donāt seem to understand how ownership works with media. Whether youāre buying physical or digital, all youāre getting is a license. Those EULAs have also gotten Brutal. Iād love to see consumers actually fight for better rights when buying media, but for that to happen people need to stop confusing tangible with ownership.
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Thatās the way fanboys work, Xbox fans can also be like. I think it was SEGA who were the 1st to look for a sub service to play classic games online with their PC-Eng & Mega Drive range on the Dreamcast Japan subscription servers, but thats SEGA always leading the way
Fans (not just fanboys) will sometimes look to point score over something your team or system does better than its rival just like people who support a different pollical party
Game Pass for me is one of the best things ever to happen in 21 century gaming, but at the moment the top tier is a little too much & needs to be addressed by Microsoft
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Letās dissect how both Xbox and PS price raises went down in the core gamer/gaming media bubble:
MS raising prices:
āFuck you MS! this is the last console I bought from them, what a greedy CORPO!ā or āXbox LOL!ā
OK good until nowā¦and now Sony raises prices:
āWhat are you doing Sony? we are fucked arenāt we? arrogant Sony is back!ā and then the same fuckinā person ends the post with something like this: āedit: thank god I just managed to order a Pro for 800 euros! yay!ā
Is this Stockholm Syndrome or something? you KNOW that things can only get worse by their greed (as you say) and you are buying a second system from them (at a premium price too) investing more money and going deeper into their ecosystem? how the fuck does that make any sense? 
So yeah I totally agree with Nick that this move will barely hurt Sony in terms of sales, the blind brand loyalty runs so deep that I am starting to believe thereās nothing that can make those cultists to say no to Sony for a change. And donāt get me started on the whole āitās Xboxās fault for not being competitive!" BSā¦
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For me the top tier could make sense, but the problem is that as a father of 2 in his 40s, with lots of work on the side along with other projects on the side, my gaming time has seriously been reduced. With the little time I have left, some months I can finish 1/2 indies sometimes, which somewhat makes up for the price of GPU because I also use the Fortnite battle pass. This month so far, Iāve finished planet of Lana 2 and Resident Evil Village, so I guess Iām sometimes able to make it work. But a game like Yakuza Inifinite Wealth for example, itās so long itāll probably take me months to complete, and by then it would have been cheaper for me to buy it on sale than pay 2 months of GPU.
if Iām selective with what games I play, then I can mostly make it work for the amount it costs, but usually just barely, and by then I feel like I might be in a better position to just buy the games instead since I wouldnāt have to rush them as much either.
Iām still not sure if I renew it in July 2027 when I run out to be honest. Or maybe Iāll drop down to premium.
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Gamefly commercials used to blot out the sun
To me Ultimate can only make sense as a complete replacement to buying games, which I could see as necessary to keep day one games with the sheer volume. My only issue is them going with fortnite crew seemingly for mass market appeal, I am not in that mass market.
Speaking of having kids, Sharma should flex those marketing chops and figure out the family plan. Shouldnāt be too much more work (I heard EA was against it but idk, probably just figuring out the Financials).
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Both our kids are in their 30ās, so I havenāt got the worry anymore of getting consoles/Gamepass for them, but even for me, Game Pass Ultimate is getting too expensive & where I canāt justify the outlay, unless I see deals on Loaded.com
I really think Xbox needs to look at it & address the issue, itās only hurting the brand & Ultimate Game Pass sales IMO
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I donāt like having a go at fans too much, its easy to have a go at the likes of the tifosi in F1, but one canāt deny their passion & love for the brand & all things Ferrari. Just like in sport, you need the diehard/fanboyās in gaming & like in sport the brand with the biggest following get the press coverage.
When youāre a the top itās only natural youāll get the best coverage & fans are more willing to forgive. Apple could raise the price of the iphone by Ā£300 & fans will lap it up
A lot of Xbox issues & poor sales are of itās own making & hopefull Xbox will address most of them going forward & with the new system.
I feel good times are ahead myself
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Umm, did you mean to reply to me? I was just making a joke at how common Game Fly commercials used to beā¦
Since you quoted me, yeah?
I shouldāve made that more clear. I wasnāt responding to the bit about fans, just adding Game Fly to say yeah Game Pass wasnāt the first of its kind. Like has been said with PS Now and you were saying with Sega.
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I think JRPGs are a young personās game lol, once youāre older and have so much going on, a game that can take 100 to 200 hours is half a year or even longer commitment.
Particularly for someone like me who loves to read everything, watch all the cutscenes and do all the side quests in games.
I loved Like A Dragon, but after 40 / 50 hours or so (when in even the biggest Ubi open world games Iām starting to see the end coming) I realised I was still miles from the end and put it down to come back to it - thereās just too many great games to play to get stuck in grindy bits.
Equally Iāve little interest in rogue-likes or Souls-likes - at my age I play games to chill out and to play through the story, not waste time retrying a fight over and over again or waiting for a run to finally give me what I need.
Hence my current run of shorter and indie Game Pass games while my backlog sits there lol - although I guess Iām a bit of a hypocrite as Iāll spend weeks and months in a new Forza Horizon or Assassinās Creedā¦
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I tend to not go for the JRPGs on Gamepass exactly for that reason. Sometimes theyāre games I could get on sale for 30$ for example, but Iāll pay twice that or 3 times that to finish the game over 2-3 months so Iāll play something else instead jus to justify the money for Gamepass, which is why Iām really stating to think of cancelling it. Especially since I was sharing with my brother and he is now telling me he barely uses it.
Yup, I have other Xboxes in the house for the kids, the family plan for a bit more than Ultimate or around that price could make sense for a lot of families in terms of value.
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I agree the console pricing is now getting a massive barrier & will mean more & more kids will just stay on their phones & use TikTok rather than have a console
XBox really needs to reduce the price of Game Pass ultimate too itās just too expensive now for many. A shame too becasue itās one of the best products of modern gaming but a 50% price increase is just treating fans with contempt
I think they could keep the current Gamepass offering, but then do the a la carte mode for premium users and up. Like for example, Gamepass Premium is like 17.99$ here in Canada. So what if they would add packages, like EA Play, Day 1 Games, Ubisoft Classics, each at like 5$ a pop maybe. You want to get all of that plus COD and and Fortnite Crew, then pay 33.99$ per month and youāā actually save money. At 17.99$ + 5$ Iād legit go for it, I think for me itād be reasonable. If they added Netflix to the 33.99$ package, I could see some users going for it. Or maybe some kind of cross promotion with Netflix where users of the 4K package also get Gamepass Premium, that would definitely boost Gamepass users to an insane level, but also entice people to move towards the Xbox ecosystem.
So much MS could do here to lower the price of entry when it comes to their subscription model and to do it in a consumer friendly fashion that could move the needle I think. With all consoles reaching record prices, lowering the bar of entry on the subscription services, which are pretty much essential on consoles these days, itās the least they could do.