Xbox Series X - The next Xbox that's boxy but sexy xXx

Ya, I realize that we are a more dedicated community than most. I just wanted to see if there actually were any folks here who had XBLG.

Seems like the answer is no.

It’s really hard to get a handle on the market right now because COVID shortages and demand are throwing everything for a loop. OTOH, if it lasts two years than that demand “is” the demand, there’s not really a hypothetical non-COVID market.

There are really only two things i can tell about the Xbox market - there are about 7x as many reviews for Xbox Series X as there are for Xbox Series S on Bestbuy.com (something like 7000 to 1000) which probably gives at least some vague indication as to sales figures. Specifically:
Playstation 5 full - 7980
Playstation 5 digital - 1737 (surprisingly high imo, as this seems like the hardest version of the four models to get)
Xbox Series X - 7824
Xbox Series S - 1382

I do think that Microsoft is closer to Google in the sense that they’re always fussing around with services. Pretty much everyone expects Stadia to just disappear one day, but MS isn’t exactly out of sight behind them with their need to fuss with services. OTOH, the conglomerate model companies like Nintendo and Sony “feel” a bit more boring and willing to accept less optimal service design out of an unwillingness to “fuss” with their services as much. I’m sure Microsoft wants to consolidate all their services to GamePass - but, then, charging $15 a month for online access feels pretty steep compared to Sony’s (effective rate of) $5. For whatever reason (corporate inertia, competing departments and visions) it’s hard to just wave their hand and fix online multiplayer when they’re trying to hard to consolidate everything into GamePass at the same time. It’s moments like these when the Microsoft ship seems more like the unwieldy corporate glacier it really is than then nimble upstart it wants to be.

My answer is no, I don’t have XBLG because there isn’t anything I currently play online with my Xbox, and hasn’t been in a while. I don’t have a new-gen Xbox of any flavor yet either. My console time is split between PlayStation and Nintendo these days.

But if suddenly my small gaming group decided we all needed to play Destiny on the Xbox or something, I’d sign up for XBLG and not Game Pass, because I’m not interested in Game Pass. I don’t deny it’s a good value for what it offers, but I wouldn’t really take advantage of that value. I tend to rotate between two or three games, replacing them as I finish or give up on them, but the majority of those games are long investments. It takes me six months to finish something like an Assassins Creed.

I already have a backlog of games purchased during sales or picked up as part of the PS+ free games. I don’t lack for options if I want to jump to something else. So I’m not really interested in paying to expand my possibilities, without the time to actually indulge the possibilities I have.

Just feel the need to point out that if you got the gamepass, you’d get destiny for free with all the expansions and stuff, so in that particular case, it would probably be more efficient to buy gamepass.

If we played for about 3 months, I’d roughly break even, more than that and I’d be losing money on Game Pass.

Well, right now, you can get gamepass for $5/mo, so you’d be able to get a year of gamepass for the price of a single game… But that deal will be going by the wayside soon.

But sure, i think your point is valid that gamepass isn’t a great value of you don’t want to leverage any of the gamepass functionality.

However, here’s how I think about it…

So i banked 3 years of gamepass, for $5 a month. The cost of 3 games (less than 3 at the new $70 price point.)

Am i going to want to play 3 games on gamepass over the next 3 years?

The answer to that question is obviously, “yes.” With the acquisition of Bethesda, all the games from that huge set of developers, are going to be free. It is guaranteed that i will want to play some of them.

So, just with those, I’d break even.

But then i also get XBox live gold, and cloud gaming. Plus the other million awesome games that maybe i wouldn’t have bought directly, but can now just try out for zero cost.

It’s just a totally crazy deal.

It’s cute you guys think any of that stuff is even remotely comparable to waking up on Friday with a plan to double the price of Gold subs in the middle of a pandemic.

You’re so silly, Brad.

How about when they announced in September they were increasing the price of their games to $70/€80 during that same pandemic?

I was vocal about my displeasure about this aborted price change when it was announced, but now it’s just turning into a troll-y fanboy food fight of haggling where everyone falls on the corporate shittiness continuum.

That was fast. Especially for one of the biggest corporations on the planet.

That’s the big takeaway, I need to get me some.

I was probably one of the few people still looking, but if you are, this guy (bot) on Twitter, Wario64 has been very reliable if you have a Twitter window up all the time. Xbox and PS5s, as well as game sales in general. Managed to get an Xbox at Target this morning thanks to him.

Target had them in stock for a good 15 minutes before I even got to it, so I guess they are easy to get now.

Now I need a new 4k TV/monitor with a high refresh rate. Do we have a thread around here for that?

I created one 4K TV thread in the technical sub forum when I was looking for a good one a couple years ago. No doubt it’s probably out of date now, though I am happy with my LG.

I didn’t even have Gold before Ultimate was a thing.

Wario is in no sense of the word a bot.

No, I don’t think a long overdue price increase of 16% for games being adopted by multiple publishers is as bad as a 100% price increase for Gold.

“Long overdue”, I like that.

In Denmark, we still dont have any PS5’s nor any Xbox’s for sale since the few hundred that were released a few days after they were supposed to.

First world problems I know, just kinda annoying when I really wanted one of each!

I’ve long been dreaming of the day when I could pay more money for games.

Also, I like how we are still talking about how evil Microsoft is, for a change they didn’t implement, and ended up resulting in actually improving the service for users by no loner requiring a purchase at all to play F2P online titles.

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You’re right. They are heroes for finally changing their policy of being the only platform that demanded you pay a subscription fee to access free to play games for the last 16 years.