Film distribution rights are tricky. They’re often owned by a single entity in the US, but spread across potentially many entities in the rest of the world. That’s likely the culprit here.
Oh hey, Civ 6 is coming to game pass. The Civ7 thread has been evangelizing that game pretty effectively. Especially the music.
Ni No Kuni II is coming later this month too. I really should check out the first game before it leaves game pass.
Sweet, Guilty Gear! I’m terrible at those games but I still had hours of fun with them.
This one (and the last two) has a story mode anyone can enjoy that’s like a double-length anime movie.
I don’t use Game Pass very often, but when I do it’s usually a poor experience trying to launch the games.
Yesterday I saw the notice about Guardians of the Galaxy leaving Game Pass, so I figured I should finally get around to playing it. The launcher window appears and gets to the “Launching game…” status message, then it crashes with no error message. There are crash reports in Windows Event Viewer, but all they mention is application error/faulting process with no clues about the actual cause.
Then I tried launching several other games that I had previously downloaded and installed, and about half of them die with the same launcher failure. Atomic Heart, Hitman 3, Tetris Effect, and Hardspace Shipbreaker.
TMNT crashes with a different puzzling error about 16-bit app not being supported with my 64-bit OS. Whhaat.
I just wasted 2 hours searching for and trying out suggested fixes (reinstall Xbox services, update video drivers, reboot, repair installs, etc), but nothing helps. At this point I’m giving up on trying to play these games.
These games all seem to be using the same launcher (big splash window with launch status text in the lower right corner), and I’m guessing this launcher is Game Pass specific. I’ve never had this much trouble with running games on Steam, and there was never a time where I could not ultimately get the game to launch.
Previously when I tried out some Game Pass games, I had to reinstall several of them due to weird Windows folder issues. Despite being the developer of Windows, Microsoft seems to have implemented the most finicky, jankiest game launcher possible.
Grr…
Do you have Sophos or other live scanning antivirus. I had terrible trouble with Game Pass games crashing on launch until I made an exception for the install folder
Thank you for mentioning that. I have Malwarebytes, and from searching for comments the launch crash issues sound similar to what I’m seeing.
Quitting the virus scanner earlier didn’t seem to help, and I just tried adding exclusions for both my C drive folders (c:\Program Files\WindowsApps) and my install drive folders. Still get crashes.
I just tried reinstalling Tetris Effect, and now it works. I can move the install between drives and it still works. Okay. Guess I need to redownload and install everything again. I have slow internet, so downloading 70GB+ Guardians is going to take two days. Hopefully reinstalling with the virus folder exclusions will let me play these things.
I suspect my problems are due to a combination of the antivirus and installing games to other drives besides C, most likely due to this weird rootkit-level WindowsApp folder that Game Pass uses that I can’t even view with admin privileges.
Earlier today, Capcom revealed updates on several anticipated titles, but one of the most exciting pieces of news dealt with fresh information surrounding the developer’s third-person shooter Exoprimal. When an AI known as Leviathan begins spawning dinosaurs into the world, exosuit-wearing heroes must compete against one another and destroy the dinosaurs. Players can choose from classes like Assault, Tank, and Support while competing online with other players from around the world. The concept behind the game is an original take on a genre that has become increasingly popular, bringing a new type of online shooter to the mix.
I did notice the Day One Game Pass thing at the end of the trailer when I was watching the presentation last night. But since the whole game seems so unappealing, it just created this feeling in me of disappointment. As in “Oh Microsoft, is your curation for Game Pass going to start slipping now? Why did you think this game was worth pursuing?”
That game looks so dumb. I may have to play it.
I think it’s one of those games where it could be really cool, if they nail the fundamental gameplay.
Last year Gamepass gave us Norco, Citizen Sleeper and Pentiment. I’m waiting for something like that to come along this year, just nothing really taking my interest on the new additions lately. Gives me time to catch up on a little backlog at least.
This doesn’t seem to have gathered much attention around here, but I did finally get around to playing it over the weekend. It’s a great little throwback to stuff like Resident Evil and Metal Gear, I thought - the former due to the lack of ammo and survival horror vibes, the latter just due to all the running and hiding I ended up doing. But it’s a cool little sci-fi horror tale, which I’m very partial to, and it’s pretty short too. I definitely recommend it.
So, Valheim is our on gamepass now.
It’s there some reason to play this game? I ask because when I watch the trailer for the game, it looks like some janky MMO from 2005.
If you like survival/exploration games (Conan Exiles, 7 Days To Die, etc), it’s worth a go. I’d say it’s one of the better ones…top 5, anyway.
I totally bounced off Valheim, very much because it is that janky MMO from 2005. But it does have great crafting physics and good boss battles. YMMV but that is why I’m on Gamepass, what have you got to lose but a little time to give it a shot?
My gamepass backlog is getting crazy though
I told myself Id finish Persona 5 by xmas… I barely touched it and am farther in Soul Hackers 2! the backlog is a real thing with gamepass!
Then don’t play Valheim. If you get hooked on it (like I did with 7DTD), your backlog will not be getting any smaller any time soon.
I had been waiting for P5 to come to Xbox/Switch, but after only putting a few hours into it, stopped to play sonething else. And then recently started playing Soul Hackers 2 and got hooked on that, so P5 is on backlog.
There didn’t seem to be much excitement over Soul Hackers 2, but so far, I am really enjoying it. I Iove the way new gameplay elements are gradually introduced without seeming like some long boring tutorial. It seemed initially like they stripped the typical SMT formula down, but while they streamlined certain things, it looks like they’ve also added some new stuff.