There’s a paywall removed link on reddit.
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Don’t know how true it was that Xbox engineers were all moved to work on the mobile store that was stalled, but it looks like with them back on working on features and working on a likely unified PC/Xbox ecosystem any future mobile store is going to be pushed back a bit.
I hope we do still get a mobile store in the future.
More tiers? UGH.
Microsoft is literally the only company that I have ever seen screw themselves over repeatedly by making things more complicated than they need to be.
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Maybe they’ll get rid of PC game pass (I’m pretty sure they will remove it soon anyway) and introduce Xbox Game Pass core (that name is available now) that’s only first party games (the entire library as of now and day one launches) for PC and Console (no cloud) priced at $20 or $17 or something.
The appeal of Game Pass are the day one games, mainly Microsoft’s. If they have a cheaper lower tier, I don’t see how that grows the service. People will just go with the cheapest tier or downgrade their subscription.
PC should be the same as console. It’s bullshit that PC pays less than console. They should be the same price.
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They haven’t actually done anything
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I know Jesse. I just hope they keep it as is until Helix. Lower the price to $10 and $20 with online paywall being gone and done. Problem solved.
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The online paywall has to go for Helix devices; it won’t go for Xbox One/Series X|S. They didn’t change how Live worked on 360 once the Xbox One gen hit, for instance.
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Three tiers seems ideal to me especially with all having PC and Console games now + any letting you access XCloud for owned games. $10 curated backlog, $15 standard tier with first party added a year after launch, and $25 flagship tier with day one. Though lowering a subscription price this long after raising it is a slippery slope because eventually they’ll have to raise it again (they’ll need to raise it again immediately if there isn’t an increase in subscribers to offset the lower price).
But yeah, I don’t think experimenting with more tiers than that will help the service in the long run. As is they’ve kinda struggled communicating the value of each existing tier and bringing the general public on board. At $10 a month essential could actually be like Netflix with non console owners getting into streaming games directly on their TV.
They need to an annual option already . It’s a joke there’s no annual option for the service.
I think best thing to do is create a tier with game pass games but remove stuff like ea play, Ubisoft classic, Fortnite crew, etc. I assume online paywall gets removed soon because of helix
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I don’t know where things are headed but I’ll say I like what she said and quite surprised the things she mentioned Xbox didn’t have. I do get the feeling that are talk of investing in tech might lead to more investment in their own engines.
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Actually, since we heard that partners were against a yearly option (speculation was that EA was the partner and likely now Ubisoft and Epic), if Microsoft does a no EA Play/Ubiclassics/Fortnite Crew version. Maybe the other partners putting on Game Pass would be more willing to allow that version to have a yearly version.
Otherwise, the only option Microsoft would have is to do a first party only yearly sub.
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We just had Booty do an interview and mention Xbox Games Technology Group in The Coalition, that builds their tech in EU and deploys it for different studios using it. I don’t think Microsoft is planning to make competition for Epic in this area, but we did hear about how they’re working on getting Creation Engine to have similar tech to UE.
Which thinking about it, that’s likely something XGTG worked, as we got news that Microsoft was helping Bethesda with it.
That reason makes sense. For example I doubt epic wants somebody to lock into a year and things change with Fortnite crew.
I think best solution is to modify premium tier to have day ones, but exclude third party services. For the cod elephant in the room don’t make it launch but say it will be available in that tier within 9 months or something
True and I agree.
It’s one of the reasons why they shouldn’t change anything with Game Pass right now. They should leave it as is until Helix and then revamp it accordingly.
$10 for the vaulted games. $20 for games day one and $30 for all the perks that are in there now along with dlc/expansions for Microsoft’s first party games.
They need to keep it simple but as I said in my above post to Jesse, I don’t think that they should change anything until Helix. Why revamp and change things twice in an 18 month span when they can do it once.
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One thing about the CoD talk is that most of the people playing though Game Pass are not going to just buy the game because it didn’t launch on it and 9 months later, they will have no reason to jump in as he hype for it will be over.
Most of them are likely even returning players from years behind, returning because they have a reason to with Game Pass, throw in the fact that Blops7 was Blops7 and not new entry into one of the other CoDs and people that do buy CoD yearly likely didn’t have a reason to do so right away.
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People can lock in though because we can stack up to 36 months. I wonder if that’s treated as a loophole? I do notice on the Microsoft account that you used to be able to be billed for up to two years at a time (just with no discount) and now you can’t even do that.
Premium already doesn’t include third party services, so anything they do to add day one games to that tier would result in a price increase for it. I’m not sure that’d achieve the result of making people happy with a “lower” price. Premium also exists with first party added a year later and just straight up NO COD, so day one games + a COD promise would probably make it $20 or more. You’d essentially be getting rid of the standard tier at that point, and the existing Ultimate tier would be more like “Plus ultra” (ultimate plus).
The other problem is that there’s no indication that Fortnite Crew, EA Play, or Ubisoft+ are pushing up the price. Xbox seems to have made some larger deal with Epic, so Fortnite crew specifically might not actually cost much or otherwise has already been “paid for” in whatever deal that was so removing it won’t take away the cost of it. We know Xbox did make a deal with Ubisoft to get ABK to pass, so Ubisoft is holding the cloud gaming rights to ABK games for like ten years or something. This might be part of that. Either way I don’t think Ubisoft cares much about that small “classics” collection. Same with EA Play. That service on its own is already cheap. I think if anything those companies benefit from the additional eyes on their backlog of games to build more interest for new releases. These deals are worked out behind closed doors and usually done in a way that benefits both companies and comes at as little cost to them as possible.
I think they raised the price of Ultimate because they wanted to raise the price of Ultimate for whatever financial reason, and then they made deals to try and justify the shocking sticker price for customers. In general I’d have expected Xbox to work backwards from “We want to make this much money off of Game Pass.” and then worked on how to do it and how to sell the new price to customers. The hardest part being the last 
.
My only concern with that is it’d be a big jump for the average consumer. You’d essentially be killing the standard tier and making premium into what Ultimate was, so it’d go basic (essential), ultimate (premium), and ultimate plus (ultimate). And a $10 price jump for each tier might be a lot for average customers. Subscriptions usually scale to make people want to upgrade to the tier the business wants everyone on. In this case I think that’s premium where people go “Oh, I get all this for only $5 more?” and premium especially looks good next to the massive price jump of Ultimate. Harder to say with Game Pass though. They sold themselves on day one so Ultimate is the tier people will look first to now. It’s even hard to say why Xbox is having this conversation now. The outcome changes based on whether the damage is being done to Xbox’s reputation and Sharma is looking primarily for a win to gain back trust from the community, but Xbox actually wants people to downgrade from Ultimate to mostly be on premium and they’re pleased with subscription revenue financials (which Microsoft has said at earnings calls). Or if there’s been financial damage and Xbox somehow actually thought more people would be okay with the $30 price and would keep paying that.
But yeah, just something simple. I’d also agree about coinciding the changes with Helix’s launch. If they really just want to win back love then a $5 price decrease for ultimate or yearly plan for every tier that gives two months free is fine.
What I did really like about the changes last year was the added simplicity with every tier including Console, PC, and Cloud Games (on the service or owned). That was great and tied the idea of Xbox as a wider ecosystem together. Plus it just made cloud gaming more accessible to the people that might be most interested (casuals). I don’t want them to get into the weeds over having a tier that pleases every specific group of people.