Xbox Game Pass, Game Pass Ultimate now Includes EA Play! [XGP, GamePass]

MHW is maybe the only game I’d play come the 18th.

So of all the things.

MHW - something feels very off about the UI. Think I'll drop it.
RE5 - making me motion sick. deleted.

I just created an ESO account/character so uh... I guess that's that.:oops:

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https://majornelson.com/2019/04/30/coming soon-to xbox-game pass-wolfenstein-ii-the-new-colossus-wargroove-and-more/
Already finished with Wolf II on PC.
Might try Black Desert again, but the beta didn't really click at the time.
The Surge - may give it a spin.
Tacoma and Surviving Mars seem neat.
 
So of all the things.

MHW - something feels very off about the UI. Think I'll drop it.
RE5 - making me motion sick. deleted.

I just created an ESO account/character so uh... I guess that's that.:oops:

-------

https://majornelson.com/2019/04/30/coming soon-to xbox-game pass-wolfenstein-ii-the-new-colossus-wargroove-and-more/
Already finished with Wolf II on PC.
Might try Black Desert again, but the beta didn't really click at the time.
The Surge - may give it a spin.
Tacoma and Surviving Mars seem neat.
I did some ESO.
I got my 2 acheivements for the MS rewards and moving on. it's not terrible.
 
Matt Booty, head of Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios, has said that his team is aiming to release a first-party Xbox game about every three months.

Speaking to IGN's Ryan McCaffrey, Booty was asked if there was any goal or cadence at which Microsoft wished to release its first-party games.

Booty responded that Xbox Game Pass is "the main driver" for a release schedule as Microsoft wants to ensure there is a "steady stream of games" coming into the subscription service for both PC and console.

For Booty and Microsoft, "every three months feels about right."

"I think about like how long you spend with a game and just sort of the cadence of discovery there," Booty explained. "So if you can do a game every three months, and if a game takes somewhere between two years and four years, I mean, just think about things that have come out recently, you know, things like Red Dead and God of War need to be getting into five, six years. Right? But let's just say for the sorts of studios, like a Ninja theory or a double fine that two, three years starts to be the cadence, right?

"So, then if you've got a game a quarter and you're taking two to three years." Booty continued. "You can kind of back into the math and say, well wow, you probably need somewhere between 10 and 12 studios. But... making games is not yet a perfect science, right? There's no creative endeavor that is. So there's going to be things that take longer. There's going to be some things that we start and say, hey, great idea, but it just isn't, you know, the Jello doesn't want to set. Right. Um, and so I think we need some, some buffer in there, right? So the first, that's kind of my basic answers. We'd love to be feeding a high quality game into game pass about every three months."

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/0...ty-xbox-game-about-every-three-months-e3-2019

Pretty much why I thought was the main driver for the acquisitions.

Tommy McClain
 
So, this is interesting. Ezekiel III, one of Twitch's paid E3 presenters who interviewed tons of developers at E3, asked every developer he came across what they thought of Game Pass. And pretty much all of the ones on Game Pass say that they love it and have had a great developer experience with it. They also mentioned that other developers that they talk to also have had a great experience with being on Game Pass and love it.

He asked them all of this off camera and off the record so that they wouldn't feel obligated to say good things.

He talked about it a little on today's Dropped Frames.

This is important, because if developers aren't happy about being on Game Pass, you'll see games dry up for it. But if developers love it, then there might be a lot of developers trying to get onto the service.

Since Game Pass is a curated service, this also means that it's easier for MS to ensure that only quality games make it onto the service if a lot of developers are trying to get their games onto the service.

Regards,
SB
 
So, this is interesting. Ezekiel III, one of Twitch's paid E3 presenters who interviewed tons of developers at E3, asked every developer he came across what they thought of Game Pass. And pretty much all of the ones on Game Pass say that they love it and have had a great developer experience with it. They also mentioned that other developers that they talk to also have had a great experience with being on Game Pass and love it.

He asked them all of this off camera and off the record so that they wouldn't feel obligated to say good things.

He talked about it a little on today's Dropped Frames.

This is important, because if developers aren't happy about being on Game Pass, you'll see games dry up for it. But if developers love it, then there might be a lot of developers trying to get onto the service.

Since Game Pass is a curated service, this also means that it's easier for MS to ensure that only quality games make it onto the service if a lot of developers are trying to get their games onto the service.

Regards,
SB
yup, ever since I tried it on PC I can see the potential and this could be the second coming of Christ. do you have a link?
 
So, this is interesting. Ezekiel III, one of Twitch's paid E3 presenters who interviewed tons of developers at E3, asked every developer he came across what they thought of Game Pass. And pretty much all of the ones on Game Pass say that they love it and have had a great developer experience with it. They also mentioned that other developers that they talk to also have had a great experience with being on Game Pass and love it.

He asked them all of this off camera and off the record so that they wouldn't feel obligated to say good things.

He talked about it a little on today's Dropped Frames.

This is important, because if developers aren't happy about being on Game Pass, you'll see games dry up for it. But if developers love it, then there might be a lot of developers trying to get onto the service.

Since Game Pass is a curated service, this also means that it's easier for MS to ensure that only quality games make it onto the service if a lot of developers are trying to get their games onto the service.

Regards,
SB

I am sure the prospect of a good amount of money the first few months and then some money ever month for many years if not decades is a better prospect than a larger amount up front and then nothing after a few months
 
yup, ever since I tried it on PC I can see the potential and this could be the second coming of Christ. do you have a link?

Unless you subscribe to ItmeJP's Twitch channel you'll have to wait for him to upload that episode of Dropped Frames to his YouTube channel. It should be up sometime tomorrow. I believe he usually waits a day to put it up there. I believe it was in the first hour of the show when they were talking about E3 stuff. The show is usually ~3 hours long.

Regards,
SB
 
the video was published, they talk about Gamepass and how developers are really liking the model at the minute 56:30 mark.

 
I am sure the prospect of a good amount of money the first few months and then some money ever month for many years if not decades is a better prospect than a larger amount up front and then nothing after a few months
yes, that's the kind of model that could work, plus it is more egalitarian for developers. We gamers tend to be conservative, buy what usually works, games from the series we love or developers we like at full price --or nearly. Leaving gems aside. I am discovering jewels like Tyranny Gold Edition, but in 2016 bought Doom for the XB1 at full price, then bought it again for PC to complete it and while I did, it wasn't that fun. Now I feel bad that I didnt even know that Tyranny existed, :cry: til PC Gamepass.

If you add to that that I've always been a bit of a Microsoft-er 'cos my first game was Microsoft Golf which I bought with my first computer, a Windows 95 PC, and I spent a lot of hours on that computer discovering things. Those experiences left a deep mark on me. That's why if I ever get a lifetime subscription to a service it is more likely going to be Game pass (PC). Also MS usually had the kind of games I liked: Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, etc.
 
This bit was shared on the Sea of Thieves thread, but I figured it needed to be here as well...

The other thing that I would add as [Xbox subscription service] Game Pass continues to grow, it’s been an interesting way to watch our whole dynamic of, ‘What does it mean to engage customers with that game?’ Sea of Thieves is a good example. At launch, and I read all the same feedback everybody else did, was: ‘Where’s the other half of the game?’ But I would also say it’s a game where what it is today wouldn’t be what it is if we had just waited another year and kept it to ourselves. It is a game that was literally created with the feedback of the community, and how you manage that through the traditional lens of how people think about what a game launch means is interesting for all of us.

I would have to agree here. Sea of Thieves needed Game Pass for it to grow like it did. Anyway, if you read the full interview they really get into first party. It seems like trying to grow Game Pass has allowed them to get those new studios & grow their first party. It also helps them spend a little more time baking them. Which should in turn produce higher quality titles. I guess we'll see.

https://kotaku.com/xbox-boss-on-microsoft-s-struggles-with-game-quality-an-1835740535

Then there's article on the new Flight Simulator & how Game Pass was able to afford making such a niche title...

It has Flight Simulator, the single-player Blair Witch horror adventure, and the side-scrolling Battletoads beat-’em-up. That’s on top of its traditional blockbuster projects like Halo Infinite and Gears 5. And that doesn’t include the online multiplayer battler Bleeding Edge from Ninja Theory, or whatever studios like Obsidian, InXile, and Double Fine end up making when they finish their projects they were already working on with other publishers.

These games no longer have to convince players to spend $50-to-$60 in a couple of weeks to end up as successes. Instead, they just need to contribute to the reason a certain group of people continue to subscribe to Game Pass.

That’s why Flight Simulator makes sense again. As a standalone product, the game is a tough sale to that broader audience. Xbox Game Studios could try to change it to appeal to more people. Or it could try to add aggressive monetization to generate more revenue from a smaller audience. Or it could just stop making those games.

But on Game Pass, Flight Simulator isn’t trying to win your $60 away from something else. It’s additive to the experience of subscribing to the service. You didn’t buy Flight Simulator instead of Halo — you subscribed to Game Pass, so now you get Flight Simulator and Halo and Sea of Thieves and dozens of others.

And the list of games that keep people subscribing is going to look different for each person. That’s the point. Microsoft can afford to look a little bit deeper down into our individual tastes. Maybe Halo, Sea of Thieves, and Flight Simulator is enough to keep me paying $15 a month. For you, however, maybe the list is Halo, Fallout 4, and Outer Wilds.

This completely flips the thinking when it comes to funding games. Instead of making a singular product that appeals to as many people as possible, Microsoft needs to release games to build a library that appeals to as many people as possible.

Maybe we'll see more niche titles like Flight Simulator show up on the service?

https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/17/microsoft-flight-simulator-reveals-game-passs-potential/

I will have to say that Game Pass lately has totally changed my mind on the service. Initially it was small list of older titles for an extra $10/mo. I said initially at launch it needed to be $5/mo for me to Jump In. So since launch now they are making all 1st party titles available day-and-date. And they have also created the Game Pass Ultimate that gives you console titles, PC titles & Gold for $15/mo. Split that 3 ways & Game Pass for console is $5/mo. But in actuality I don't play on PC. So for me it's $7.50/mo for Game Pass & $7.50/mo for Gold. I'm hoping to find some good Game Pass Ultimate deals once my subscription is up. I didn't have a lot of pre-paid months of Game Pass & Gold when I switched, so I will have to start paying for full price later this year. If I can find those good deals like I did with Gold, I will keep my subscription. I really think it will come into its own starting with the next-gen & I can't wait to see how it grows.

Tommy McClain
 
I do like that in their way of thinking it allows them to put development budget into titles that would otherwise be considered too niche to fund.

From my own experiences on Game Pass on PC thus far, I've played FAR FAR more niche indie games than I have AAA games. While I have installed Metro: Exodus and Prey, I still haven't touched them. Instead I've been playing games like Slay the Spire and West of Loathing. Games that I had been waiting to hit the 5 USD or lower price point on Steam because I wasn't sold on how well I would like the games.

Now that I've gotten to play them, I'm going to pay full price for at least Slay the Spire just because it is so good and that indie developer should be rewarded.

Also, with how frequently I play games, how large the library is and how frequently they plan to add new games, I'm also likely to just keep my sub to Game Pass PC. As long as I play games worth at least 60 USD (at my current 5 USD a month) or 120 USD (if it gets bumped up to the regular price of 10 USD a month) a year, then it has paid for itself.

On top of that, I'll likely continue with paying full price for anything I play that I find exceptionally good (fairly rare and why I rarely pay full price for games anymore).

In a way this changes how I pay for games. Instead of paying up front for an unknown quantity, I'll pay afterwards if the game is something I really enjoy. If it is exceptional, I'll pay full price outside of the service. If the game is just good, I'll buy it on sale outside of the service. And if I didn't like it much, the developer will likely get at least something still for me trying their game.

That's compared to my current stance of paying full price for a game maybe once a year and otherwise waiting until the game is 50-75% off.

Oddly enough, this means I'll likely spend less money on games that aren't on the service versus games that are on the service.

Regards,
SB
 
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Just adding here there’s just a few days left to upgrade to ultimate and get your gold and game pass combined and then upgraded to ultimate for £1/$1.

Essentially 6 months gold and 6 months game pass gets you 12 months ultimate up to 36 months worth!

Check out the deals thread for more details.
 
Currently MS Rewards has 12 months of XBox Live Gold for 22500 credits if you're on the Gold Rewards tier. This translated to 4 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for those who upgraded. This is a good deal considering 3 months of GP:U would be 35000 credits on gold tier.

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The FAQ now has post-Ultimate Form conversion ratios. [ https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass#faq ]

After you join the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate plan, you can continue to redeem Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass codes. These codes will automatically convert to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate at a ratio based on the ERP (Estimated Retail Price) of those codes.

Token, Redemption Value
Gold 1 month, 20 days of Ultimate
Gold 3 months, 50 days of Ultimate (1+ month)
Gold 6 months, 79 days of Ultimate (2+ months)
Gold 12 months, 4 months of Ultimate
Gold 24 months, 8 months of Ultimate
XB GamePass 1 month, 20 days of Ultimate
XB GamePass 3 months, 2 months of Ultimate
XB GamePass 6 months, 4 months of Ultimate
XB GamePass 12 months, 5 months of Ultimate
XB GamePass 24 months, 10 months of Ultimate
PC GamePass 1 month, 20 days of Ultimate
 
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