Is Xbox Game Pass worth it? | December 2021 Review
Yes. It’s the easiest, yes, ever.
Kind of.
You know game pass. You pay Microsoft
some cash every month, and in return
you get access to a whole library
of over 100 games to download.
There are some incredible classic games,
indies and third party titles.
But also some of the biggest
and best known series in gaming
that includes a bunch of select titles
from EA through the EA play service,
you also get almost everything
ever published by Bethesda
and you, of course, get everything
from Microsoft and their huge
back catalog, including solitaire.
Many of these games appear on the service
the same day they go on sale as well.
In the past few months alone,
we’ve gotten Forza Horizon 5
Age of Empires
four and Halo Infinite, available
on Day
one, included as part of the service.
As someone who bought Halo
three back in 2007 for $100,
which is very hard to scrape together
when you’re earning $6.50 an hour
as a Hungry Jacks night shift person.
Yeah, this represents really,
really good value,
even if you just play a few games a year.
But wait, there’s more.
most of these games to pretty much
any internet enabled screen
that includes phones, iPad, laptop,
smart fridges.
Android
and PC have dedicated apps,
which allows you to do a few extra things,
but so long as your device has Microsoft
Edge,
Google Chrome or Safari,
you can run Xbox games in your browser.
It is truly the future.
We don’t have flying cars
or moon colonies just yet, but I can play
Deeeer simulator
wherever I damn well, please.
Now that’s a future
I think we can all get on board with.
Why did my voice get deeper just then?
Then I tried the Xbox Cloud Gaming
Preview earlier this year, and it’s
still about the same quality
now that it’s fully released,
which is good so long as your internet
connection is good,
there is slight input lag.
So competitive games or ones
that require precise timing aren’t ideal
for the service, but you might notice
in slower paced or casual stuff.
It’s certainly not the best way
to play any of these games,
but it’s perfect
if you want to try one out before
committing hard drive space to it
and downloading it on your PC or console.
It’s also pretty good if you just want to
play a game while you’re on the road.
By the way,
no matter where you play these games,
whether it’s on cloud or Xbox or PC,
your saves will sync across all of those.
So you should be able to pick up and play
wherever you want.
Basically,
you have access to your X-Box games
and this saves wherever you go, so long
as you have an internet connection.
Of course, how far we have come,
I remember things that
I remember taking my Xbox
hard drive out back in the day.
You know, I used to take this out
and take it around to my friend’s house
when I wanted to access my Halo
three files.
Huh? Savage times how?
How did we how did we survive the 20?
Look at this.
But why it’s
there is even more value to be had.
Look at this ultimate.
You just get these random perks
offered as well.
It differs a little by region,
but look what we get here in Australia.
YouTube Premium for three months Disney
Plus Crunchyroll,
Discord, Nitro
Some unique skins for certain games.
If you claim
all these perks,
you do save a lot of cash,
but a lot of them are
subscription services.
So do make sure to note
when the subscriptions actually kick in
so you can avoid paying for them
if you don’t want them anymore.
I think, I think that’s it. No way.
What’s that?
It’s more value
all of the plans will grant you
some discounts in the Microsoft Store.
Mostly, it is games
that are on Game Pass, which you can
then go on and buy if you want to stop
using the subscription service.
And if you go with Ultimate,
you also get games with gold,
which allows you to play online on Xbox
consoles and gives you a bunch
of free games every month to download.
Those ones are yours to keep.
By the way, if you cancel the service,
you actually still get to own these,
which is pretty cool.
OK? That is everything that you get
with the subscription services,
at least for now.
Before we break down, if it’s worth it,
what’s the catch?
As with all subscription services
like Spotify and Netflix,
Apple Arcade,
you do not own any of these games.
If you stop subscribing, you lose access.
Now, that might not seem
like a huge issue,
but after 5095 a month for multiple years,
that’s a lot of money that you’ve spent
with nothing to show for it.
You won’t own a tangible game
at the end of the day. Oh
yeah, that $100
that I spent on Halo three fourths
14 years ago.
JS, I can still pop that disc into this
Xbox 360, and it’ll probably run.
I can also sell it on the second hand
market if I felt like it.
Really, this comes down to
if you like to own your games
or like to collect them personally,
I’m totally fine with this renting model
because if I move house,
I don’t have a whole bunch of extra disks
that I have to pack up and store
when I move.
I also like to try a lot of stuff
and don’t really go back to games once
I’ve completed them.
There is also the very real advantage
of being a digital download.
There’s no shipping games
and printing them to physical resources
and housing them in plastic.
Yeah, that’s a plus in my book.
So his game pass with it.
There are three plans to pick from one
for console
only, one for PC only and Ultimate,
which grants you access to both.
As you can see here, the PC and
Ultimate versions also grant each play,
which gets you all those select titles,
and I should emphasize select titles.
You often won’t see
the newest stuff on a play, but they do
sometimes give you a ten hour trial
for the newer games on PC.
You are also forced
to download their specific app,
so now you have both the Xbox app and
the app open when you play these things.
Yeah, not a huge deal,
but somewhat annoying.
In addition, Ultimate also gives
you cloud gaming X-Box live gold
and those perks I mentioned.
So there’s a fair bit of value
added for an extra five bucks a month
for both the PC and console only versions.
You’re paying Microsoft $131.40
per year for the service.
You know, that’s a fair bit of money,
but also games cost a fair bit of money.
So you wanted to buy Halo
Infinite from a store.
You’re paying 100 bucks
to own that physical copy.
If you’re the kind of gamer who doesn’t
really stick to a single game for years,
then yeah, this is a great deal renting
from Microsoft because you can play Halo
and all this other stuff
for just a little bit more
than the price of owning
that one full game.
If you play more than one big game
a year, you’ve
kind of made your money back already.
Just a side note,
the current Xbox app on PC is a bit shit.
There have been multiple times recently
as well where I’ve tried to launch a game,
and it just won’t start
or give me a really cryptic error message
and beat me to the Windows
Store to some random app.
It also sometimes just randomly doesn’t
download.
Yeah, at this point,
I’m kind of not surprised
when it happens,
which isn’t really a good thing.
This seems to be a really common problem
because there are a lot of Google results
on this.
It turns out a lot of the fixes
involve opening up
Windows PowerShell Command prompt
or resetting an app in settings.
I just don’t think you should expect
your customers
to have to deal with that sort of stuff,
especially if they’re kids.
They just want to jump on
and play their games.
I am one of those kids.
Microsoft’s please fix your shit.
If you
really want the best Game Pass experience
and don’t really care about the stuff
that Ultimate offers, then Game Pass
on console is probably the best choice,
at least right now.
It comes with a few extra games as well.
Now, if you do want ultimate
and all that extra stuff it brings,
you will be spending $191.40 per year
and almost $200.
You’re getting value back after playing
just two or more of the big new releases.
Again, if you don’t go back to games
that you finished very often,
I think that is amazing value, especially
once you add all the extra perks on top.
It’s hard to quantify
exactly how valuable cloud gaming is,
but it’s essentially giving you
an Xbox Series X to play on remotely,
considering they are about $1,000.
It’ll take you over
five years to pay that equivalent cost,
and you’ve had access to an ever
expanding game
library the entire time as well,
all for less than the cost of an X-Box.
It’s obviously not the same thing
as owning an Xbox, but if you do end up
using the cloud gaming service a lot,
and if it improves, you’ve basically
got yourself a budget version of an Xbox
that goes everywhere you go.
That’s pretty cool.
OK, here’s
where it’s a bit of a different story.
If you’re a fan of indies, classics
or just don’t care about the latest games,
then the value of Xbox Game Pass
kind of falls off a little bit.
Right now, for example, Steam
is having a sale, and a lot of these games
are also available on Game Pass.
Imagine coming to a steam sale
knowing you have a budget of 191.40 cents.
I could buy all the games I want
and they’ll be tied to my account forever,
not just till I stop paying Microsoft
one day .
Like, here’s an example of games
I just totally randomly picked.
Some are on Game Pass, others aren’t.
That’s eleven games, most of them good.
I’ll let you decide which ones are good.
This list will keep me occupied for
well over a year.
It’s admittedly a little bit
harder to get sales like this on console,
but use game stores
do serve a similar role.
If you shop around,
there are always bargains to be had there.
The Xbox store
also occasionally has sales, so it’s worth
keeping an eye out
for that on the consoles.
And if you want to get really crafty
for $1, you can sign up to Game Pass
Ultimate now you can just try
all the games you like within that month.
Make use of the discounts to buy
the ones that you liked
and then just cancel the service.
Overall,
if you’re looking for a straight up value
Game Pass, it rewards
quantity of games played.
Yes, you do get your money’s worth
for playing through two big titles,
but if you play 15 or even 20, you’re
still paying the same amount of money.
You’re just getting to play
a whole lot more stuff.
So if you are the sort of person
who likes to try out as many games
as possible,
then Game Pass represents enormous value.
You can play wow the hundreds,
you can play hundreds of games.
You will not get around
to playing every game on the service.
I just don’t think it’s possible.
Prove me wrong.
On the flip side, if you really like
to sink your teeth into a game
and really spend a lot of time on it,
then maybe Game Pass isn’t for you.
Waiting for a sale
could be just as valuable, if not more so.
I think
impasse represents a pretty big shift
in how games are consumed.
And I’m very interested
to see how other platforms
and publishers respond to this new model.
It moves the focus away from a dedicated
gaming platform
and onto, well, pretty much anything
with an internet connection.
And it’s clear Microsoft
just want to remove all barriers to entry.
If it’s got a screen, they want you
to be able to play games on it.
Nintendo don’t know that it’s it’s
not coming to the Switch anytime soon.
Look, as I pointed out, it’s
certainly not the service for everyone,
but it is making huge strides in allowing
more people to play a broader
range of games for less money.
And that’s a good thing. Yeah, yeah.
What can I say now that now’s a good
time to like video games?
Thanks for watching.
OK, not all, not all video games.
Yes. Yikes.
