Give Xbox Game Pass Your Money Or Else

Microsoft asks its most loyal gamers to stay the course and fork over more cash

Image: Tango Gameworks

Microsoft has a way of taking something that feels logical, perhaps even inevitable, and then doing it in the worst way possible. Sometimes that’s pitching a next-gen console as a general purpose home entertainment device and DRM-filled prison for dying media, and sometimes it’s raising the price of a Netflix-style subscription service to compensate for the arrival of a major blockbuster that cost $69 billion to acquire.

Game Pass Ultimate is now $20 a month, or $240 a year, to stay plugged into the Xbox hive mind. It’s the only one of three confusing tiers that gives you day-one access to new first-party releases and the ability to play games online, both of which are required for Call of Duty Black Ops 6, likely to be the best-selling game of the year. That is $1,440 over a six year console generation, or about the cost of three Xbox Series Xs, or the price of a decent gaming PC and a Steam Deck combined. And at the end of it you own nothing but the memories you made along the way.

That is very close to the vision laid out for the original Xbox One that was so ill-received Microsoft has been playing catchup ever since. And in 2024 a lot of people think it’s a pretty good one, even if it means GOTY contenders occasionally going away and eventually disappearing forever. Though at the time that vision revolved around spending a lot of money on a machine. Now Microsoft is marketing the fact that you don’t need an Xbox to play Xbox games as one of its biggest strengths.

Christopher Dring believes that the price hike signals Microsoft is serious about keeping Game Pass around and making it sustainable. While the service has been blamed for training Xbox players not to buy games, he makes the interesting point that it could end up being an alternative to platforms like Roblox and Fortnite that actually encourages players, especially younger ones who are used to being engulfed in one all-encompassing live service game, to actually engage with the rest of what the game industry makes.

It’s an interesting theory, but I’m pretty much done trying to connect every new Microsoft glitch into some grand strategy for making money. I think there’s a lot of throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks and, at this point especially, pressure to squeeze more returns out of any parts of the business that are still strong. I also think there’s only so much longtime loyalty and goodwill you can cannibalize for short-term gain before it shows up in the long-term health of business.

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A blue ocean play for untapped audiences on PC and mobile is all well and good, but in the meantime it’s people buying Xboxes and spending money on that storefront that keeps the rest of it alive. There’s been some revisionist history, in my opinion, about how much Microsoft does or doesn’t care about competing in the console space. How do you read Phil Spencer’s 2020 email to his bosses, Satya Nadella and Amy Hood, about the PS5 reveal and not think that Microsoft was fully committed to the console race and, if not winning it, at the very least clawing back market share.

As I wrote this week in my own take, Game Pass felt like the last think Xbox had going for it and whatever the business case is for the price hikes and next moves, the retreat from that with nothing else to put forward beyond “a bunch of cool upcoming games that would have been made anyway may or may not be timed Xbox exclusives” seems like an existential problem for the sales pitch of “go buy this thing.” I’ve soured on subscriptions myself, but I think it’s a lot easier to make the case for building a sustainable program to support bold new projects when you don’t shutdown the studio behind Hi-Fi Rush.

At least one person seems to be finding some catharsis in that: former SIE Worldwide Studios chairman Shawn Layden. He tweeted a GIF of Ron Swanson muttering “predictable” when the price hike news broke. The former PlayStation exec, ousted in 2019, had been on the record for years arguing that the costs of development meant giving away first-party games for free was a dead-end.

But the meme response mostly caught my eye because Layden also did a Gob Bluth spit-take last month in reaction to Spencer saying Black Ops 6 wouldn’t have Xbox-specific bonuses because, “I want to give you the choice on how you play your games, and who you play with, and not try to do slimy platform things to force you to do what I want you to do.”

It was a dig at Sony paying for exclusive content and marketing deals for Call of Duty for years, something that Microsoft had also done throughout the Xbox 360 years. “Phil be talkin outta his ass lol,” read one of the many comments calling bullshit that got favorited by the ex-PlayStation boss. A far cry from when Layden, Spencer, and Reggie Fils-Aimé all appeared on stage together as collegiate pals at the 2018 Game Awards.

One final thing I want to note about the Game Pass price hike is how it wasn’t messaged. There’s no Xbox Wire post about it and why it will be better for subscribers in the long run. No Xbox executive mentioned the shift either, including head of marketing, Aaron Greenberg. The closes there was to an acknowledgement was Spencer retweeting Dring’s approving assessment over at GamesIndustry.biz. Maybe the Microsoft Gaming CEO will give him the exclusive on what this means at Gamescom next month.

Concord is better and worse than it looks

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Sony’s next live service game experiment, Firewalk Studios’ Concord, left me underwhelmed during its first beta this weekend. The retro futurist, we already have Guardians of the Galaxy at home online shooter feels decent to play and has some very fun abilities unique to each class but nothing about its worldbuilding seems meaningfully married to what you actually do in the game which is run around a map shooting people in the head.

Firefly-lite cutscenes sizzling with corny humor and beautiful loading screens flying you into each planet don’t have anything to do with the modes your playing, the objectives in them, or the opponents you face. Concord plays like underwater Call of Duty with a galactic cast of Saturday morning cartoon aliens. the meta game revolves around completing arbitrary milestones like sprinting a bunch during a match and unlocking cosmetics.

I enjoyed the couple hours I played, especially a fungus character who releases spores that they can teleport back to at anytime, but it’s hard to see anything that would keep me coming back week-after-week for each new cinematic vignette the developers have promised. And the game is $40. Everything about it seems like an uphill battle. Players have spotted a mention of PVE in the credits though, which would certainly be a much better fit for what the game’s currently presenting.

Live service interrupted 

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Apex Legends also raised prices this week. Every season will now be divided between two-mini $10 battle passes instead of following one bigger one, with premium versions that cost $20 each compared to $30 previously. Adding salt to the wound was the fact that the battle passes must now be purchased solely with real world money rather than in-game currency, meaning dedicated players grinding out every season's rewards could no longer roll those over to keep ranking up premium battle passes for free. 

I noted in a write-up this week that frustration with Apex Legends has been slowly boiling up for a while now due to server issues, bugs, and cheating, and the popular free-to-play battle royale is reportedly no longer among the top ten games by monthly active players across console or PC. The mod team for the Apex Legends subreddit, which boasts 2.8 million members, is calling on fans to review bomb the game on various platforms with civil but honest feedback. 

There have been 15,000 negative reviews on Steam in the days since the announcement plunging the game's rating into "overwhelmingly negative." The success of Helldivers 2 players getting Sony to reverse course on its controversial PSN login for PC is a clear proof of concept for the collective action. But the rate of negative reviews has already started to taper off and publisher EA still hasn't issued any updates on the subject despite the Apex Legends Twitter account continuing to get hammered by angry players every time it posts. 

My guess is that EA will walk back some of the prices enough to quell the rebellion but stick by closing its grinding Apex Coin for free battle passes loophole and the mini-season approach. The motivating factors here seem very similar to the Game Pass situation: soak your existing customer base to juice the quarterly earnings report amid a stalled (or even shrinking) live service game. 

Once Human is bailing on a controversial microtransaction idea. NetEase's new post-apocalyptic survival MMO takes the unusual step of resetting players' characters every six weeks. It also locks purchased cosmetics to those individual characters rather than being account-wide. The company has since tried to clarify that while level and map progress resets with each new scenario, blueprints, currencies, and some crafting materials all stay intact. 

And after discussing player complaints with Twitch streamer Jason "Thor" Hall has also decided to make microtransaction unlocks available for all characters. "Damn, y'all might actually be one of the only devs in recent time with such clarity in communication with your player base," responded one player. 

The Division 2 is also dealing with fallout from an unpopular reset mechanic. The Tom Clancy loot shooter, which instead of dying beneath the shadow of Destiny 2 has continued to thrive in its own small but respectable way, announced a new season model for Year 6 last month. The big take-away was that it was going to follow in Diablo IV's footsteps and make players create new characters from scratch every new season to engage with the seasonal content. 

The idea makes sense on paper: make it easier for new players to hop in and force hardcore fans to grind anew every so many months. But the backlash was swift and relentless and now the Ubisoft team at Massive tweeted this week that it's "re-evaluating" the idea. The team will return ahead of the fall update to show players its revised plans. Personally, I think more loot shooters need roguelite modes. 

Around the industry

The CEO of Manor Lords' publisher went semi-viral this week for a quote-dunk on LinkedIn rejecting the "ever-accelerating treadmill" of Steam Early Access expectations. Tim Bender's post was in response to one by Hinterland CEO Raphael van Lierop pointing to Manor Lords as a poster child for the pitfalls of launching a game in Early Access without a plan or the capacity to deliver a steady drip feed of meaningful updates. 

Bender said that despite the content lull, the hit medieval sim sold an additional 250,000 copies last month. "Success should not create an ever raising bar of new growth expectations," he went on. "Not every game should be aimed at becoming some live-service boom or bust." It's easy to see why the sentiment spread like wildfire given the pressure people on all slides of the gaming industry feel to chase unrealistic goals amid skyrocketing competition for people's time and money. 

But I also take Lierop's point that Manor Lords is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to how to survive in Early Access. His own team's game, The Long Dark, has received over 100 updates since launching in Early Access on Steam a decade ago. He's since removed his original post and apologized to the developer behind Manor Lords, Slavic Magic, citing an online backlash that was aimed not just at him but also his team at Hinterland. 

More links

• A call for liberating kids and reinvesting in third spaces for them in the face of gaming and screen addiction panics (The Guardian)

• A long-time indie developer talks about the arms race when it comes to Steam Next Fest demos (Gamesradar)

• Apex Legends tournament organizers mess up prize payments with some losers getting thousands incorrectly dumped into their bank accounts (Polygon)

• Nintendo’s accused of systemically miscrediting people for its external translations (Game Develop)

• Indie studios open up about the great gaming industry rapture no one’s talking about (Wired)

• A former Pokémon Company and Bungie lawyer talks about tracking down leakers and why they ruin their careers for a little clout (Bloomberg)

• The Switch is officially the longest a Nintendo console has ever gone before getting a successor (VGC)

• All your favorite games are actually retro now (Digital Trends)

• Summer days are hear again: a dialogue on yard work and long JRPGs (Remap)

Programming note: It’s been over two months since the last issue of Dead Game. Time flies! It turns out juggling the chaos of three kids and a full-time job is not conducive to writing a weekly summery of depraved gaming culture and industry nonsense. You have no idea how many times I sat down on the couch late at night to type up one of these newsletters only to instead curl up in the fetal position and pray for one night of uninterrupted sleep. But here we finally are again.

I think part of the problem is that I’ve been psyching myself out too much about the length, format, and topics covered in each issue. So instead of trying to kick each piece off with some Big Idea™ I’m going to try a looser approach and see where that gets me, and of course all of you, Dead Game’s loyal readers who have subscribed and generously donated a small sliver of your most precious, personal, and limited resource: time. When Dead Game does end up miraculously appearing, I hope it feels like pulling an old wrinkly coat out of the closet and finding a five dollar bill inside. Onto this week’s issue!