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Microsoft is hiking the price of Xbox Series X and Xbox Game Pass
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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The amount they bumped it up by is still, relative to the price of a new game, cheaper to have for four months. I too don't have a need for it, but if they bump the price up to the point where it's not a good deal anymore, they lose their customers.
Yeah very true. Microsoft is essentially trying to turn games into a subscription service, and that seems to work well for some people. Whether the current price is what will be the long term price is up in the air, I guess it cruedly comes down to which method gets the most money per user.
Those subscription services have proven to be very popular in the movie/television/music spaces, so all of that makes sense for the type of consumer who expects to only experience the thing once, but as long as those games are still available for purchase, it's all fine by me. To my knowledge, Microsoft hasn't done that yet, but Nintendo has with their online pass and their refusal to continue to sell their old games (or even to carry forward your digital purchases from previous consoles).
There is certainly a degree of popularity to streaming, with the convenience and less upfront cost. Part of it is also the fact that we increasingly don't have other options if we want to own media. Like you mentioned, Nintendo is the perfect example with their subscription service being the only way to play those games on modern hardware. If Microsoft does indeed keep this as a separate option, then that's totally fair game. I'm just unfortunately not optimistic about what the service will become in the future.