Xbox Game Pass - GUIDE TO BEST DEAL IN FIRST POST

[CurryKitten]

After my first month or so on Gamepass, I've come to the conclusion that it's an amazing thing.  I can't even keep up with the new releases coming out, let along go through any sort of back catalog.

 

But the other thing I like about it is the breath of games.  It seems like publishers are willing to take more of a risk with quirky or different games that might not have been seen amongst the usual AAA titles.  Things pop up on Gamepass and people are far more likely to download it and give it a try.  As someone else mentioned, there's not as much value attached to it as it was "free" so you are less likely to stick with it because you didn't pay for it, but you are far more likely to sample a much wider selection of games than normal and find stuff you did like that you didn't expect to.

 

Given that I only really got it to get MS Flight Sim, I now think it's a must have.  

[Stopharage]

11 minutes ago, JPL said:

That’s just one game though, if you can even really call it that. I know, I know, I’m just being impatient, but I feel like I’ve been waiting an eternity. First world problems and all that.

Moon on a stick here. You’re probably paying around £3 a month and expect weekly AAA content by the sounds of things. Waiting an eternity? Hyperbole alert. Games take more than a week to put together; I’d rather wait for games to be fully developed rather than promising big deeply flawed as was the case with The Ascent. If Halo and Forza are released this year then Gamepass has already paid for itself. 
 

Gamepass in cost terms is no more than one single AAA game. What it delivers is range in the same way that Netflix does. AAA games are on there as classic films are on Netflix, it’s just in both cases they’re largely older titles. The expectation that there’s going to be a AAA release every few weeks is unachievable. I’d rather the current mix of occasional AAA titles amongst indie delights and titles you were interested in but were unlikely to purchase. 

[Stanley]

12 minutes ago, JPL said:

That’s just one game though, if you can even really call it that. I know, I know, I’m just being impatient, but I feel like I’ve been waiting an eternity. First world problems and all that.

Well it’s that one game which tipped me over to Series X in the first place, and it’s every bit as good and next gen looking as I’d hoped so if that is what you want then give it a try. 
 

I wouldn’t say you’re impatient so much as ignoring what’s going on right now, both in the games industry and the world in general. K

[Gotters]

I do suspect that many of us will become like Bart when Shelly Bobbins makes him all the cupcakes he can eat with games on Game Pass

 

[dumpster]

2 hours ago, Jamie John said:

One thing that I've found with Game Pass, although this extends to all streaming platforms, including for films, TV and music, too, is that I value the games on it far less than if I'd actually paid for them. I'm a lot quicker to abandon a Game Pass game, for example, than one I've bought outright, because it's 'free'.

 

My sub is good for another couple of years, so it's a moot point for the time being, but after it runs out I'm going to seriously consider whether I renew it or not for this reason. It was the same with PS Plus, and was a big part of why I cancelled that; I found myself 'ticking off' my PS Plus games, completing and enjoying some, but uninstalling the majority of them after less than an hour's play. I was playing them because I felt obliged to, because they were sat there in my library, rather than because I wanted to. The same is true of Game Pass, a lot of the time (although, admittedly, the hit to shit ratio is a lot better than it was with PS Plus).

 

This is probably a wider topic about 'free' content and perceived value, but I've recently started buying 4K and regular Blu-Rays again, despite subscribing to Netflix 4K, Prime Video and Disney Plus, and I'm finding I value the discs I buy and enjoy the films I watch a lot more than if they were just on a streaming service. I'm also actually watching the films, too, enjoying the ritual of setting aside a couple of hours to give them my full attention, whereas before I was hardly ever watching films, despite having access to thousands of them through the aforementioned streaming services.

 

I was talking to my dad about this the other day as well. His favourite hobby is listening to music, and for the past five years he's done so almost exclusively from buying vinyl. He cancelled his Spotify sub years ago because he found that he wasn't really listening to the music on there properly, whereas now, because a record costs at least £15 each time and he can only afford to buy a few each month, he'll take the time to sit and listen to it properly and get his money's worth, valuing it a lot more. There are also lots of albums he's learnt to like after repeated listens that he would have just dismissed if he'd listened to them on Spotify and decided after one hearing that he didn't like them.

 

I think the same is true of games. I uninstalled The Ascent after about 30 minutes because I couldn't be done with waiting for it to get good, but if I'd paid for it then I may have tolerated its flaws a lot more. All the best games I've played so far this year have been ones I've paid for. In fact, I've completed 22 games since the start of 2021 and only two of those have been Game Pass games. I don't know if there's any significance to this, and I'm aware I'm rambling, but it's something which occurs to me quite frequently.

This deserves its own thread. I agree wholeheartedly with every point you make. 

[Dudley]

Yeah I've been treating it like a shop where I don't worry about prices.  When I finish a GP game, I go to the list and go "shopping" for the next one rather than download things immediately.

[footle]

3 minutes ago, Dudley said:

Yeah I've been treating it like a shop where I don't worry about prices.  When I finish a GP game, I go to the list and go "shopping" for the next one rather than download things immediately.

I have things I really want to play, or replay, then things that I’m happy just to taste. I’d have bought all the first set, and about half the second set, so it’s fine if I just move on.

 

example: I didn’t get on with Virginia, so I’d have skipped Last Stop entirely. I played a load of Children of Morta whereas I wouldn’t have bothered buying another 2d top down rogue-like. I may trial humankind this afternoon, knowing that it may or may not click for me: but wouldn’t at £30. etc.

[dumpster]

I've downloaded loads of stuff from Gamepass, way more than I'll ever play.  Last night a friend asked if I'd played 12 minutes and I said no, and seeing as how it was on screen at that time it was 2 clicks to get it downloading.  So there it is, on my hard drive which has a finite capacity.  Will I play it? Maybe? Will it get wiped off to make room for something else? Maybe.  Will it be played to 100 completion? Doubt it.  

 

Meanwhile I spent £20 on EDF5 for the PS4 a couple of weeks ago and it's a daily play for me.  I love it.  Now, it's not a fair comparison because the EDF series are the greatest thing ever made by man, but when I turn the TV on, my brain says I have a hundred Xbox games to try (on a console I just paid £450 for) but my arm reaches for the PS4 pad.  

[Transient Curse]

If anyone wants to send me £20 every time they download a game on gamepass so the game is more enjoyable, I am happy to provide that service.  

[metallicfrodo]

@dumpsterI’m not really sure the point you are making. I’m playing Zelda Skyward Sword at the moment. Doesn’t make the GP library worthless or change it’s value proposition  just I’m enjoying something else. If EDF was on game pass you’d play it there, or are you saying you are so obsessed with the objective cost that you wouldn’t enjoy it if you hadn’t payed 20 quid for it? When I got my Quest I played loads of games on that, didn’t suddenly make my PS4, Switch and Xbox libraries worthless.

 

Just because you have a subscription service it doesn’t have to be the be all and end all of all you play. 
 

Ultimately there are always more games released than we can consume and we make a choice, generally forced upon us by the amount we can afford to spend, GP just lowers that cost barrier and arguably allows more people the opportunity to sample more games.

[Gigga]

Gamepass is great, but Gamepass on the PC is a constantly dissapointing and frustrating mess.

For some reason since the last windows update, I can no longer play Football Manager 21, which I play pretty much daily. There are now 3 different xbox apps, as well as the microsoft store.

This happened to FM20 as well at some point, although the error was different and it wouldn't load at all whereas now the game loads but it can't recognise that I'm logged in so it crashes.

[Mr. Gerbik]

5 hours ago, HarryBizzle said:

On a slightly related note, my brother in law has bought a PS5 for his kids thinking they’d be pleased. They come over to ours and only play the Series S. They turned the PS5 on once and couldn’t care less because my digital and PS+ collection just doesn’t match Game Pass. I’m trying to convince him to take the PS5 back or sell it and get them a Series S and Game Pass. 

I'm guessing your brother in law *himself* prefers the PS5 - he's probably interested in specific Sony exclusives himself - and thus the PS5 is what the kids got and are stuck with.

[HarryBizzle]

Just now, Mr. Gerbik said:

I'm guessing your brother in law *himself* prefers the PS5 - he's probably interested in specific Sony exclusives himself - and thus the PS5 is what the kids got and are stuck with.

Nah. Hasn’t got a clue and does things without asking for advice. 

[Harrisown]

1 hour ago, Wahwah* said:

There just aren't any games that are written to take advantage of these machines,  that's it. 

 

I think there'll be a couple of impressive looking games this year, but unless halo and forza do it for you, I don't think they'll be on gamepass. 

 

You might have to put your hand in your pocket and buy Call Of Duty this year if you want maximum bells and whistles on Series X. I gather the buzz is that it's the best looking console game ever.

Nah the call of duty will just be call of duty. Just wait till they fill the screen with UI elements.

Not to mention the gameplay which will be decades old by this point , but that’s harsh because I just don’t enjoy the hoorah nonsense anymore.

 

 

[Mr. Gerbik]

1 minute ago, HarryBizzle said:

Nah. Hasn’t got a clue and does things without asking for advice. 

Ok fair enough, it was a good guess

 

[Fry Crayola]

Hey! You can't go around grading your own guesses!

[Mr. Gerbik]

10 minutes ago, Fry Crayola said:

Hey! You can't go around grading your own guesses!

8/10

[deerokus]

Kids love sad dad games tbf.

[dumpster]

1 hour ago, metallicfrodo said:

@dumpsterI’m not really sure the point you are making. I’m playing Zelda Skyward Sword at the moment. Doesn’t make the GP library worthless or change it’s value proposition  just I’m enjoying something else. If EDF was on game pass you’d play it there, or are you saying you are so obsessed with the objective cost that you wouldn’t enjoy it if you hadn’t payed 20 quid for it? When I got my Quest I played loads of games on that, didn’t suddenly make my PS4, Switch and Xbox libraries worthless.

 

Just because you have a subscription service it doesn’t have to be the be all and end all of all you play. 
 

Ultimately there are always more games released than we can consume and we make a choice, generally forced upon us by the amount we can afford to spend, GP just lowers that cost barrier and arguably allows more people the opportunity to sample more games.

I think it comes down to this...  Gamepass is great value for money and you would be a fool not to subscribe to it if you have the Xbox. But for me, it is a load of stuff that's just..  there..   whereas EDF5 is a game I've chosen.  Now, if it happened to be on Gamepass that would have been great, but that would be a bonus.  

 

It's like when you first discover emulation and dowload a complete Romset.  Suddenly you have a thousand new games to play, you spend 10 minutes perusing the list only to go back to Mario Kart because that's the game you actually want.  

 

I guess that's where I'm coming from.  Gamepass is brilliant but theres so much choice that I end up barely scraping the surface of it, because I didn't make a considered choice to get those games. They're just.. there.  It's great to have them but unless the game you really wanted happens to be on it it's just extra choice that I don't really need because I already have too many games in the pile. 

 

But it's an amazing service and I recommend it.  For the price of a bottle of wine a week you get to play something like Last Stop which you may love or hate but even if you waste an hour on it once, that's a tenners worth.

 

 

 

 

[Flanders]

4 hours ago, Jamie John said:

One thing that I've found with Game Pass, although this extends to all streaming platforms, including for films, TV and music, too, is that I value the games on it far less than if I'd actually paid for them. I'm a lot quicker to abandon a Game Pass game, for example, than one I've bought outright, because it's 'free'.

 

My sub is good for another couple of years, so it's a moot point for the time being, but after it runs out I'm going to seriously consider whether I renew it or not for this reason. It was the same with PS Plus, and was a big part of why I cancelled that; I found myself 'ticking off' my PS Plus games, completing and enjoying some, but uninstalling the majority of them after less than an hour's play. I was playing them because I felt obliged to, because they were sat there in my library, rather than because I wanted to. The same is true of Game Pass, a lot of the time (although, admittedly, the hit to shit ratio is a lot better than it was with PS Plus).

 

This is probably a wider topic about 'free' content and perceived value, but I've recently started buying 4K and regular Blu-Rays again, despite subscribing to Netflix 4K, Prime Video and Disney Plus, and I'm finding I value the discs I buy and enjoy the films I watch a lot more than if they were just on a streaming service. I'm also actually watching the films, too, enjoying the ritual of setting aside a couple of hours to give them my full attention, whereas before I was hardly ever watching films, despite having access to thousands of them through the aforementioned streaming services.

 

I was talking to my dad about this the other day as well. His favourite hobby is listening to music, and for the past five years he's done so almost exclusively from buying vinyl. He cancelled his Spotify sub years ago because he found that he wasn't really listening to the music on there properly, whereas now, because a record costs at least £15 each time and he can only afford to buy a few each month, he'll take the time to sit and listen to it properly and get his money's worth, valuing it a lot more. There are also lots of albums he's learnt to like after repeated listens that he would have just dismissed if he'd listened to them on Spotify and decided after one hearing that he didn't like them.

 

I think the same is true of games. I uninstalled The Ascent after about 30 minutes because I couldn't be done with waiting for it to get good, but if I'd paid for it then I may have tolerated its flaws a lot more. All the best games I've played so far this year have been ones I've paid for. In fact, I've completed 22 games since the start of 2021 and only two of those have been Game Pass games. I don't know if there's any significance to this, and I'm aware I'm rambling, but it's something which occurs to me quite frequently.

I am finding this a lot as well, but I think alongside the different value you place on things you buy it’s also the case that the sheer volume of content on these subscription services masks the fact that a lot of them are very much ‘wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle’ in what they actually offer you. 
 

Take films as an example - think of your favourite director and then find out how many of their films are accessible via streaming services. Even if you’re fortunate enough to have the whole shebang of Amazon Prime, Disney Plus and Netflix, in my experience you will be lucky to have access to half. And that’s for the likes of Steven Spielberg or David Fincher - try going even slightly less mainstream and the choice on the streaming services is even worse. 
 

Game Pass and PS Now are no different. It completely blows my mind when I see people on here say things like they’ll never buy another game and Game Pass is all they need forever now. If I had to make a list of the 50 best games of this century I think only a small handful are currently on the service. 
 

All these big companies have done a great job in convincing us that their services are the only way to consume media, but not one of them comes close to comprehensive coverage - for film, TV and video games anyway. Spotify might be closer for music but I imagine someone who’s much more into their music than I am can list a load of vital records that aren’t on there.

[skondo]

7 hours ago, moosegrinder said:

 

Forever. They technically don't do years of gold any more so whatever stock is out there should be finite now. Did you top up to 3 years before you converted?

No, it's definitely changed. I decided to convert my Gold to Gamepass back in, maybe February, and I think it converted one year of gold to three months Gamepass. Today, one month of gold converts to one month of Gamepass. I wondered when the change happened.

I didn't do the three year top up as I did it ages ago and stupidly cancelled Gamepass later. I can't use the offer twice.

 

*I mean Gamepass Ultimate.

[matt0]

It feels like in this thread you've got people saying "I like Game pass" and "I like these games."

 

Then you've got other people saying "you have tricked yourself in to liking these games because they are bad" or "I can't believe people are happy with this service because I am not" or "I personally don't like this niche game that is incredibly popular with fans of the genre and has won itself a wider audience, it must be shit. Also I am somehow personally offended by the whole genre."

[SaintAnselm]

19 minutes ago, matt0 said:

It feels like in this thread you've got people saying "I like Game pass" and "I like these games."

 

Then you've got other people saying "you have tricked yourself in to liking these games because they are bad" or "I can't believe people are happy with this service because I am not" or "I personally don't like this niche game that is incredibly popular with fans of the genre and has won itself a wider audience, it must be shit. Also I am somehow personally offended by the whole genre."

Indeed, the whole thing is just tedious as fuck now.

[Fry Crayola]

1 hour ago, skondo said:

No, it's definitely changed. I decided to convert my Gold to Gamepass back in, maybe February, and I think it converted one year of gold to three months Gamepass.

 

Were you a Game Pass subscriber at the time? That sounds like you were, in which case you get the reduced offer. If you're not a current subscriber, the conversion ratio is 1:1, otherwise it's 4:1.

 

1 hour ago, skondo said:

I didn't do the three year top up as I did it ages ago and stupidly cancelled Gamepass later. I can't use the offer twice.

 

You still get the conversion at 1:1, you'll just pay £11 instead of £1.

[HarryBizzle]

I don’t really get the “I value game pass games less.” I sort of understand it, because I felt the same about pirated games as a kid, but now I feel like that view values your money over your time. 
 

If I’ve decided to play a game rather than another one, I’m going to give it a fair shot like I would a game I’d bought. 

[deerokus]

Surely the phenomenon of not valuing game pass games the same as ones you've bought is a 'you problem', not a game pass one.

[skondo]

@Fry Crayola. Oh I see, I honestly can’t remember, but definitely possible. That would make sense, thank you.

[Fierce Poodle]

I bloody love it. I get to try all sorts of games I wouldn’t have gambled my hard-earned cash on in the past. Some of them I might only play for an hour or two, but if I genuinely like them, I’ll finish them. I don’t have to force myself to like something just because I’ve paid for it. I really can’t imagine why anyone would complain about it.

[Mr. Gerbik]

Ever since getting Game Pass I'm finishing WAY more games than before. But it's just like having a ROM collection, either you dip into the first 5 minutes of every title and are happy with that. Or you decide to focus on one game until you're done with it and then move on to the next. I've chosen the latter but it's hardly the fault of game pass itself if others choose the former.

[Gabe]

8 hours ago, dumpster said:

This deserves its own thread. I agree wholeheartedly with every point you make. 

I mean we've had this said many times in this thread, in Steam sales threads, Humble/Epic etc. Go to the TV/film folder and I'm sure the same was said about Netflix/Amazon in the early years - ditto Spotify in the music folder. It's not a new argument and, honestly, I'm not even sure there's much more to say about it.