Microsoft’s Game Pass gets cheaper, loses launch day Call of Duty access

New Xbox CEO says subscription "has become too expensive for too many players."

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[Control Group]

From a purely selfish perspective, this is good news. I don't play CoD, and I subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate - through which I played Expedition 33, Harry Potter, and Star Wars Outlaws so far this year. Along with A Game About Digging a Hole^, Pacific Drive, and Dredge. It is an absolute no-brainer subscription for the way I consume video games.

That said, I feel for the people who bought in based to any significant extent on day one access to CoD titles. I suspect dropping the monthly price by $7 won't make up for the loss of a key feature. And given where new AAA game prices are going, the $84 annualized saving might not even cover buying the next CoD title.

^ Which, incidentally, is a delightful little snack of a game.

 

[Control Group]

$7 a month is $84 a year, which should more than cover the individual purchase of a single $70 Call of Duty game every year, right?

What am I missing?

Two things - I don't trust that a title with the fanbase and sales numbers of CoD will stay at $70 when it's no longer competing with Game Pass for Windows sales. It's possible I'm just cynical.

But the second thing isn't cynicism, it's human nature. A person saving $7/month almost certainly doesn't set that $7/month aside to spend on a specific thing. It ends up sort vanishing into the monthly household budget. Meaning that psychologically, the person who was getting day one CoD included with Game Pass has gone from getting it "for free" to getting it "for $70," which is not a great feeling.

 

[Control Group]

2 months of gamepass is cost of "owning" a game. Are people really blasting through a new title that frequently? Even during my peak gaming era it usually was the exact same like 3-4 titles on rotation for years.

The last games I've touched in 2 years that were new is Death Stranding 2, High on Life 2 and Flight Sim. Everything else was free like Battlefield 6's multiplayer etc.. so thats $190 vs $537 for Gamepass PC.

Two things: first, yes. Back in the day, I'd easily burn through a new game a month. That's not as guaranteed today as it was then, but I have already played Expedition 33, Hogwarts, and Star Wars Outlaws this year, via Game Pass.

But second, it's not reasonable to compare your playing behavior when each game is an individual purchase to your playing behavior when each game is part of a monthly subscription, having a marginal cost of $0.

I also used to have 3-4 games on rotation for years - when I was a kid living on my parents' budget with a secondhand NES. That was not a predictor for my behavior when my finances changed, nor would it have been a good predictor for my behavior if (say) my parents' cable bill included unlimited game rentals.

And as sort of an addendum to that point (so I guess it was three things), it is important to note that the monthly subscription model makes the marginal cost of trying out a game you're not sure of $0. $70 is a lot to ask for a title about which I'm dubious, but if I can just give it a try? No problem.

Which, in my case, means I played Expedition 33, which now ranks as among the all-time greats of my gaming career. If I'd had to pay retail for it, I simply wouldn't have no matter how well it was reviewed or respected; I hate JRPGs. When it didn't cost me anything extra, though, it was easy enough to say "I should probably see what all the fuss is about, and when I stop playing after a few hours I've lost almost nothing."

And come to think of it, if Rocket League hadn't been free via PS+ way back when, I would never have picked that game up. And over the years, I've put thousands of hours into that game. Ditto Tower of Guns, though that can't be more than a couple hundred hours total.

None of which is to say that a Game Pass sub is a good idea for you, of course. But I don't think it should be difficult to understand that for some - perhaps many - gamers, it is unquestionably worth it.

 

[Control Group]

Gamepass basically replaced the video rental store, I think if more people seen it like that then it would be seen more favorably. I never used GameFly but I know that everyone who uses it uses the hell out of it, but I don't play games enough to make that worth it.

Maybe - but while it's absolutely paid for itself several times over every year I've subscribed, I don't know for what percentage of gamers that would true.

I think you're right that a reframing would help, but there will always be people for whom it would make zero sense to pay for such a thing, and they'll be mystified at how other people can see it as worthwhile. These people will then be very loud online.

Not that dissimilar to how I am mystified at people who can buy a console or gaming PC, and then only ever play one franchise on it. The idea of a "Madden Machine" or a "CoD Console" is utterly alien to me.

But when the platform holder itself offers the services and they have every incentive to make it desirable in the short term to lock you in long term, then it's an obvious conflict of interest.

This, I'm not sure I follow. Game Pass feels, to me, like Netflix. I'm not offended by Netflix offering me the service while also offering products on the service to make it more valuable.

I'm guessing that there is some qualitative difference I'm not seeing - or that you and I simply disagree that the Netflix model is acceptable.

 

[Control Group]

Human psychology aside, the $7 a month is fungible. If you save it on Game Pass and spend it on Call of Duty, you still end up ahead.

This remains true even if CoD goes up to $80 (price increases beyond that seem unlikely in the immediate term)

Sure, the math absolutely works out in your favor after the change. I, in fact, acknowledged that in my first post (admittedly, I did follow it up by cracking wise over the rising cost of AAA games, undermining my own point).

But it also wasn't just a wisecrack; I will be honestly surprised if we don't see some games hitting $89.99 on the standard edition by the end of next year. Though I will also acknowledge that you're far better informed on the industry than I am, and therefore more likely to be right.

But "human psychology aside" is about as reasonable in marketing as "aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" I maintain this is a feelsbadman moment for any people who specifically valued day-1 CoD, and pointing out the math simply doesn't cut it. The way a person feels about any given thing - from how much a video game costs to whether vaccines are a good idea - is rarely amenable to changing as a result of facts.

Edited to change "cracking $90" to "hitting $89.99", because the former may have sounded better in my head, but the latter is what I meant. And "what I meant" seems more important in this context.