You might even be able to sell it for what you paid for it…

if costco stop selling xbox(a series) its a bad sign.

It varies by location. But for me on brazil at least every single subscription doubled in price. PC Game Pass was 36 BRL, it is now 70. Ultimate was 60 BRL, now it’s 120. I cannot justify this shit.

This link has a pretty good comparison between the new and old gamepass features/prices. The cheapest tier is actually better than it used to be, but it looks like the more expensive ones are getting bundled with shit most people won’t want just so they can justify increasing the price.

There are four tiers to the gamepass: Core, Standard, PC, and Ultimate. The first two were exclusive to Xbox, the PC version was obviously exclusive to PCs, and Ultimate was available for both. All tiers aside from the PC gamepass are now being bundled with xbox’s cloud gaming, with higher tiers having shorter wait times and better quality.

This is all US pricing, so take it with a grain of salt considering the OP said their prices doubled:

1. Core, now called Essential, is a $10 tier that will now have double the games (from 25+ to 50+) and is newly available on PC as well with no price increase.
2. The $15 Standard tier, now called Premium, is likewise not seeing a price increase and will now be available on PC. However, it looks like Call of Duty will no longer be included in this tier, which I imagine is one of the biggest sellers of gamepass.
3. The previously $12 PC tier is increasing in price to $16.50. Looks like the only new “benefit” is it will come with Ubisoft+ classic (40+ games) now. Still exclusive to PC.
4. Then there’s the previously $20 Ultimate tier. It’s price is increasing to $30 a month, and it’s the one everyone’s upset about. The only new benefits are cloud gaming, Ubisoft+ classic, and a Fortnite subscription.

Between that, this, and Disney+ cancellation page “accidentally” going down during that fiasco, this is exactly why I’ve switched to using only virtual cards for subscriptions. Pause/Cancel the virtual card, voila, no more subscription.

Good thing I never signed up for one.

Any Steam game that requires an EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, whatever account is a total non-starter for me. I’ve looked at some of the newer Battlefields when they’re on sale for like $2 and I still can’t be convinced. Likely never will.

Ok with me, there’s lots of other publishers out there, both independents and studios, that I’d much rather give my $2 to.

To be fair, those kinds of changes do not usually happen so rapidly after a purchase, and was likely already planned for implementation and started before the sale.

In other words, it is likely EA was already planning to make that change regardless of if the sale went through or not.

they dont want SA or kushner to hold an EMPTY bag, but i suspect they will get alot of cancellations in the future. wish they seperate westwood so a proper CNC can be revived.

Just so you know, they only thought you were stupid enough to pay more because you were stupid to enough to pay at all.

Use your brain before your wallet. Start torrenting.

Stop being average.

To be fair it‘s as absurd as it was inevitable. Gamepass was always meant as this temporary thing you can try out to play some new games until everyone jumps ship because of increased prices. It has been preached for years. No one could‘ve seriously thought this was a long term alternative to buying games or at least buying licenses to games on Steam. All online subscriptions are scams in the process.

Why watch playthroughs at all? Just wait till the games are on sale. And only a year isn’t that long, wait more and get better deals with more complete games. There’s nothing saying you need to hurry in any way, and several things saying it’s a good idea to wait. There are more than enough games available for anyone to not have to constantly claw at the newest releases in any way.

“watch playthroughs of new games on Twitch of YouTube”

welcome to my life for the last couple of many years lol. Not that I’ve been boycotting per se, but I haven’t bought a new game in years cuz my laptop is over a decade old so the best I can play is minecraft, or just use my xbox one for battlefield 4. the corporate greed from the last decade has caused me to never buy this crap again. I love videogames so much, thank god for emulators.

I don’t need any trash EsaudiaA dishes out. People need to go play old/vintage games, get back to the roots, before games were nothing but meaningless cash grabs.

silksong isn’t on sale.

One could imagine that conveniently, Microsoft’s online support pages and the amount of support staff were designed to only handle hundreds of thousands of cancelations at a time.

I’m not a licensed math surgeon, but I think your math is wildly optimistic in favor of Microsoft due to how the subscription totals are actually distributed per price tier.

I don’t doubt that they did a lot of math to figure out an acceptable level of churn for this change, I just don’t think it’s nearly as generous and wide as you’re calculating.

There probably is a very real churn limit that they’re trying to avoid, and my hunch is that there exists a breaking point that could be hit with an aggressive and sustained boycott / cancellation spree, but again, I’m not a math surgeon so I could be wrong. That’s just my gut feeling.

And it gets even better. Instead of up to 33% leaving, say 50% of that group convert to Premium instead of Ultimate. That isn’t any lost revenue since the price is going up to what Ultimate used to be. So that cushions their numbers even more.

Now factor in the cost savings from a lower server load and less staff to run the back end, and possibly the smaller licensing\use costs for the games available to play since less people would be accessing those games.

Okay, but wouldn’t a higher price also discourage new people from subscribing in the first place? Or are companies that shortsighted?

It’s the Microsoft way. They hide security features that should be standard behind higher subscription tiers. It’s entirely bullshit.

It’s all a scam.

It’s been a scam since the first Xbox where they charged people to play online.

The thing is, once they see dumbasses are willing to be scammed, they see no reason to stop there.

The only winning move is not to pay.

Ehh… PSN isn’t really any better. Their Game Pass competitor is a hot mess. Better to just buy games outright, especially during sales.

but now will probably sign up for Playstation Network for the first time.

Fucking hell… some people legitimately never learn.

They are destined to be suckers for life.

Nope. Nobody uses them.

Your comment really just shout “i’m living under a rock!”

Unfortunately the only music software I’m somewhat productive in runs only on Windows or Mac, and I really can’t afford Apple’s hardware prices. So it’s either using WIndows, or being very limited at a very dear creative outlet.

Once upon a time, the idea with subscriptions like this was to have customers set it and forget it. Charge them a small/reasonable amount and they’ll keep giving you money forever. Giving people a reason to think about - or worse, evaluate the merits of - the monthly deposit they’re giving you used to be a sin for companies.

But here we are, seeing the difference between “companies” and “corpos”.

Not that the harm hasn’t already been done, but I did just see this: thisweekinvideogames.com/…/microsoft-pulls-azure-…

The missus and I sat down about a year ago and tabulated up how much all of the various streaming subscriptions were costing us per year (it was close to $1,000 when including YouTube Premium).

We cancelled every single one, and put that money towards building a home NAS and filling that up with downloaded media. No more ads, stupidly low bitrates, or TV shows & movies disappearing because a license expired.

The server has more than paid for itself at this point, and every additional spare dollar is being put aside for our kids’ tuition.

ETA: Consider doing the same, your kid’ll likely thank you in the long run!

PS: Never too late to introduce them to all of your favourite classic games, either - though that one may be a bit harder to get them onboard 🤣

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You should start using your brain instead of your wallet and begin torrenting.

For all the money you’ve wasted renting games with gamepass, you could’ve been owning them with a fraction of the cost of a VPN.

Yeah, I’ve got so many more games than I have time to play them that there’s never a need to play full price for anything. I wishlist em and pick them up when they’re on sale less than £10

Lately, I’ve only been buying indie games. I can’t justify dropping $70-$80 on one game and even when those games go on sale they’re usually $40-$50.

If you read reviews and do a little research you’ll find that there are actually a lot of really cool indie games and you can get multiple games for just a fraction of the cost of double or triple A games.

I agree. But if you are on a console and want to play online, you already need a subscription.

I want a subscription free Console that supports online play.

Word. Just give me a completed game that is mostly bug free and has all features that are alleged to be part of the game on release.

I always preferred waiting a year for AAA games. Patches, mods, guides and sales.

Even better when GOTY editions or bundles with all the DLC on sale.

Be a smart consumer. Don’t pay for things you could be getting for free just so the business can have a nicer campus.

If it’s a major release, wait until the game is finished and then torrent it.

I get the inherent value people attach to it, but after having it several times (I’d have it for a month or two and then drop it for like, a year), I would never go back to it even if it still seemed like a good deal.

For an app developed by Microsoft and working on a PC, it has some awful pathing, and I lost saves and had issues launching games on multiple occasions. Tried many fixes and it never worked out. Some games would work for me, others wouldn’t. So for me, since it felt like a toss up to get a game to work, it was pointless.

it WAS a good deal early on. Also when they introduced their partnership with RIOT and it would allow you to unlock all the characters in LoL that was a very good deal if you were a League player.

but the price increases and what have you…meh. it was good to get access to some games and not have to pay full retail for them. I’m thankful I didn’t pay full price for Starfield and just played it on gamepass but there would be months on end where there was nothing on there worth playing.

I justified it as a games rental. I mean I easily paid $5 to rent a game for the weekend in the 90s. Paying 12 bucks to rent games all month long wasn’t bad (for PC).

But the price they’re charging now, I may as well buy the games I do play, rather than paying for the subscription. The problem for Microsoft is that money is gonna be going to steam instead of them.

you wouldn’t? not if the cost and convenience was right? just out of principle, regardless of value?

I could see doing it if I had more time to game

same boat. as soon as that service was announced it never made sense to me.

i play a lot of games, but its never at a consistent pace, just makes more sense to buy.

same goes for shit like netflix. im not constantly watching something, so why wouldn’t i just buy the movie when i have a movie night.

I wish, Steam would make another steam machine with steamOS

The last thing I want is a gaming PC

The steam machine program was where OEMs could partner with Valve to make a gaming PC that shipped with a steam controller and Steam OS. That’s it.

You stated you wanted a steam machine, but also say you don’t want a gaming PC, but… That’s what a steam machine is

I mean, you can set up a gaming pc or laptop to mostly work with a controller and have a general interface akin to that of consoles. Retro stuff like Lakka or RetroPie already do it super well. The “set up” part is where you’ll likely spend several hours, though

I wish Steam would make another Steam Machine with Steam OS.

It’s rumored they’re working on one codenamed Fremont.

I learned after a few months of game pass that most of the games that looked interesting actually weren’t. It’s no big loss, and it’s cheaper to just buy the few games I actually want anymore. Doubly true now.

Gamepass only ever made sense to people who had time to play or dabble in a sufficiently large amount of games per year and felt the need to play some new titles soon or immediately instead of waiting. Otherwise, eventually your total subscription costs would outpace the total cost to purchase what you played, especially if purchased on sale at a later date. And the value gets worse if you ever replayed a game (s).

I’ll never really understand the excitement about this service. It was always a Trojan horse.

It can be if you buy from stores, such as GOG and Itch, that provide DRM-free downloads of games. Even Steam, depending on the game.

Then they cut staff anyways, because why leave free money on the table?

I’ve never gone away from buying physical media, but I could understand exactly why you would want to return to it.

For PC games that’s impossible, at most you can find a disc-shaped steam redeem code

You never needed physical media in order to share games with others.

You still don’t, and you can share with more people digitally.

It’s even cheaper to torrent them.

And you actually get to keep them.

Maybe, but in the Kimmel case there could have been other reasons too. Like Hollywood people not wanting to make business with a company that would just cancel contacts when they have opinions on public. Disney needs those people, arguable more than subscribers.

IMO, consumer boycotts don’t really work in general, here it might have worked, but it is also possible it worked for other reasons.