I think you’re misapplying the history of how this went down in the music industry. People consume music and games in very different ways. Outside of mobile, gaming requires a more dedicated effort, and games aren’t consumed like songs, quickly listened to and forgotten.
Right now there’s zero pressure on game developers and publishers to throw their first-run games into a subscription program. One day, when and if these services have tens of millions of subs, then maybe, but at that point the financials might actually be pretty good.
As others have said, Netflix hasn’t ushered in the death of movies (and lest we forget, this model has been around forever - HBO, Cinemax, etc. all have had original content in addition to stuff they licensed from other distributors for 30+ years). Digital sales are strong, and Netflix’s spending on content has create a market for movies and TV shows that would not have gotten made otherwise.
Think about Double Fine. They’ve always struggled because there’s not a huge market for the games they make. Now they’re part of Microsoft in their desire for original content to fill their Game Pass, and those struggles are (conceivably) over. Sounds like a win/win to me.
We have to project into the future here. Of course right now there’s a lot of money being showered at devs because it’s a transition period. It’s the same thing that happened when bundles started out. It seemed like bundles gave devs more money, and also didn’t cannibalize sales. But it’s ultimately impossible not to cannibalize sales unless the game-playing population grows dramatically. Which is a possibility, and the best one at that. But assuming the game-playing population doesn’t grow dramatically, you’re left with the same population consuming games in a different manner. This is going to distribute money differently, and the main beneficiaries are going to be the companies operating the services/stores that win out. Where the money will be distributed is anyone’s guess at this point, but we can look at other similar patterns to figure it out. In general, all these markets seem to favor the big winners, with the smaller players getting scraps.
Well GOG announced a few weeks ago that they were making going to be launching Galaxy 2.0 to organize all the stores. Also playnite already exists and does this pretty well.
Dude – this isn’t a victory. Double Fine sold out to the big boys. They gave up on running their own company. In a few years, they will probably be consolidated into the other studios Microsoft swallowed up as a result of cost-cutting operations. This is no different than EA buying Double Fine.
I think I wrote my reaction to this elsewhere – I’ll believe it when I see it. GOG has the slowest and most incompetent programmers. They can’t take 10 minutes to fix problems on their site in their sorting/filtering algorithms, like showing you games that are on sale under X dollars, that would make them millions. If they really come up with this product, and it’ll be maintained well for more than a couple of months, I’ll be shocked.
After the first day or so of trouble with Metro starting up at all past about halfway thru the intro movies, I booted it up last night and played it with no issues for about a half hour. I did notice it updated prior to launch though I’m not sure if it’s the one mentioned above, or an earlier one. Either way, I got a brief dose of mutant killing.
This game pass stuff has far exceeded my expectations, so far since last month I’ve installed and tried:
Sea of Thieves
State of Decay 2 Ultimate Edition
Recore
Void Bastards
Imperator Rome
Bridge Constructor Portal
Still want to try out:
Into the Breach
Metro Exodus
Thimbleweed Park
The Stillness of the Wind
Steamworld Dig 2
The Gardens Between
Right now this has to be the best deal in PC gaming for getting to play new releases at rental prices. And if any of them turn out to be games I want to own, I’ll just wait for a 75% off sale on Steam or they might end up part of a humble monthly bundle.
I gotta wonder what the Metro Exodus developers/publishers must think, even if they probably don’t care about little old me… I didn’t get to pre-order on Steam in time before they removed the game. I chose not to buy it on Epic for $10 less than it was for sale on Steam. And then 4 months after release I can play it for $4.
Can anyone get me up to speed, in the past how has this worked, has microsoft just added a few new games every month?
Yes, generally speaking a few games come on and a few come off each month. So far, the oncoming games have outnumbered the outgoing ones but who knows if that will last.
I’m sure it’s been mentioned already but so far no first party MS games have rolled off - I haven’t seen it stated explicitly but the assumption is that basically all first party stuff will remain on Game Pass forever. So probably you should prioritize playing the other stuff if there’s both in your queue.
Slay the Spire: play on Nintendo Switch instead
Wargroove: uninstall
Guacamelee 2: uninstall
ABZU: uninstall
Thumper: I think I’ll play this
Neon Chrome: eh, I’m not sure (sorry Tom)
Ori: I wasn’t told this would be sad
Lots of issues with games detecting my controller. I have 3 of them plugged in and the games seem pretty confused.
