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Xbox Game Pass Gets ‘Enshittified’: Pay More, Get Less

from the game-pass-fail dept

Karl Bode was just talking through some of the changes that Netflix is making to its subscriptions, most of which revolve around charging more for same or lesser service. In the case of Netflix, this means raising subscription rates while injecting advertisements where once there were none. This so-called “enshittification” process — a word I have very much come to love — follows a predictable track. Instead of writing that track out, I’ll just post Karl’s opening paragraph from the post above, as it’s perfectly written.

We’ve illustrated repeatedly how as streaming subscriber growth has slowed, streaming giants have had to pivot to some bad industry habits to ensure Wall Street gets those sweet improved quarterly returns. That’s included everything from utterly pointless layoff-creating mergers and price hikes, to annoying new restrictions and a steady increase in ads (that you have to pay more to avoid).

That. All of it. Which brings us to Xbox’s Game Pass service. Game Pass has long been something of a gold standard in video game streaming programs for a couple of reasons. First, it operates quite well. I’m a subscriber and use it several times a week and, anecdotally at least, it’s great in its current form. Second, the subscription tiers were both fairly limited in number and simple to understand, as well as coming with great features, such as day-1 access to Xbox first-party titles.

But because the enshittification process is so predictable, Xbox Game Pass will shortly be enshittified. Microsoft is making changes to the program in the form of new tiers, discontinuing existing tiers, price increases, and the removal of some features from existing or replacement tiers. Let’s start with the price increases:

“Game Pass Ultimate” is going from 16.99to16.99 to 16.99to19.99 per month.

“Game Pass for PC” is going from 9.99to9.99 to 9.99to11.99 per month.

“Game Pass Core” (previously known as Xbox Live Gold) is going from 59.99to59.99 to 59.99to74.99 for annual subscriptions (and remains at $9.99 for monthly subscriptions).

This follows the common track, as the new subscriber rates for Game Pass as a whole have slowed. With that slowing down of adoption, the investor class sitting behind the product has to have stock gains driven by something other than new subscribers. That comes from simply collecting more revenue for the service as a whole. Hence the price increases. There’s no real new benefit to speak of here, mind you. This is just more cost for the same (at best) service.

Then there’s the removal of certain subscription tiers.

Things get a bit more complicated for the $10.99/month “Xbox Game Pass for Console” tier. Microsoft announced that it will no longer accept new subscriptions for that tier after today, though current subscribers will be able to keep it (for now) if they auto-renew their subscriptions.

In its place, Microsoft will “in the coming months” roll out a new $14.99 “Xbox Game Pass Standard” tier. That new option will combine the usual access to “hundreds of high-quality games on console” with the “online console multiplayer” features that previously required a separate Xbox Game Pass Core subscription (“Core” will still be available separately and include access to a smaller “25+ game” library).

Except that the Console tier had the access to the day-1 releases we mentioned earlier. The Standard tier does not seem to have that. So here again, we have the new program including increased cost, but this time with a decrease in what you get for that cost. To get those previous features, you have to subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate for $20/month. That’s almost double the cost of what was on offer through the Console tier, just to get what has been a core feature of Game Pass to begin with.

So, as the enshittification process dictates, Xbox gobbled up subscribers with a good offering at a good price, and is now seeking to extract as much money for as few features as possible now that the gobbling phase has run its course.

Including first-party titles with cheaper, console-focused Game Pass subscriptions probably seemed like a good idea when Microsoft was still trying to attract subscribers to the service. But Game Pass subscriber growth is starting to slow as the market of potential customers has become saturated. Microsoft now needs to extract more value from those subscribers to justify Game Pass cannibalizing direct sales of its own first-party games.

And let’s not forget Activision, which Microsoft recently spent a whopping $69 billion to acquire after lengthy legal and regulatory battles. Recouping that cost, while also offering Game Pass subscribers launch day access to massive sellers like Call of Duty, likely forced Microsoft to maximize Game Pass’ revenue-generating opportunities.

“Forced” is certainly a choice of words, but not one I would have picked myself. I can’t say I know for certain that some flavor of this was always Microsoft’s plan for Xbox Game Pass, but given how closely this follows the brunchlord playbook, to borrow Karl’s phrase, it sure feels that way. These were all choices made by Microsoft.

Whether customers will continue to choose to subscribe to Game Pass, on the other hand, is an experiment we’re about to witness in action.

Filed Under: enshittification, game pass, price increase, xbox
Companies: microsoft

Xbox Turns To Sports Titles To Combat Dwindling Game Pass Subscriber Sign Ups

from the sportsball dept

Well, this is interesting. As part of our many posts about the cord-cutting trend that has been on the increase over the past decade or so, I have long made the point that the only thing keeping cable television looking even remotely like it did twenty years ago has been live sports. With the advent of more streaming options and partnerships for sporting events, even that last thread has started to unravel, though overly tortured fracturization has kept cable television out of the grave, for now. But the point is that the draw of sports titles was something of a lifeline for traditional cable television.

In an interesting parallel, Xbox has seen a slowdown in new subscribers go its Game Pass product. And it sure is starting to look like part of the plan to combat that slow down is sports titles.

With little warning, Microsoft surprised folks and announced that NBA 2K24 was coming to its video game subscription service, Game Pass. More games being added to Game Pass is always nice for its subscribers, and this latest addition continues a trend that indicates that Microsoft is looking to rely on sports to help keep numbers up and consistent.

With the addition of NBA 2K24 on Xbox Game Pass on March 11, Microsoft has secured another popular sport for the service. NBA 2K offers up professional basketball, MLB The Show provides folks the chance to play pro baseball, FIFA lets you play the biggest soccer game in the world, UFC is there, too, and Madden of course offers football fans a chance to digitally win the Super Bowl with their favorite team. Oh, and cricket is on Game Pass as well.

This makes some inherent sense. One of the things people complain about with sports titles is that each yearly iteration too often comes with little more than roster updates and a gameplay feature here or there. Spending 60−60-60−70 for that year after year gets quite frustrating. But if you can suddenly play the updated titles as part of a larger subscription service like Game Pass, suddenly it all becomes more reasonable.

There are loads of people out there who might only play a few sports games a year. Previously they had to pay $60 a pop for these titles. But with Game Pass they get the next Madden, MLB The Show, etc for one monthly fee and get access to a ton of other games they might want to check out like Forza and Halo. If Microsoft can keep these customers around with steady, consistent sports offerings, it could be a way to make sure the numbers don’t drop too much between big releases or the holidays.

So while Game Pass isn’t in a freefall in the way the cable television market has been, perhaps this is a combination that just makes sense. Sports games get complaints about having to buy them full price every year without a lot of new stuff in them, but with Game Pass it all just comes along for the ride.

Filed Under: game pass, sports, video games, xbox
Companies: microsoft

from the literally-just-say-something! dept

The chaos for Xbox keeps on rolling, it seems. We were just talking about how years of muddled communication coming from Microsoft’s Xbox team over exclusives and game ports to other consoles is resulting in a ton of confusion and speculation among the gaming public. The responsibility for all of this lies squarely at the feet of Xbox chief Phil Spencer and his team, which have oscillated between talking out of both sides of their mouths on these exclusives, and just sitting back and not saying a single thing when the confusion shows its head. And what that also allows for is speculation and conspiracy theories when, seemingly, a 3rd party vendor simply makes an oopsie.

GameStop tweeted out a promotion the other day for a in-store demo day where the public could walk into a store and try out some games using “Game Pass,” Xbox’s game-streaming and subscription service. It’s currently called “Xbox Game Pass,” but GameStop’s tweet referred to it as “Microsoft Game Pass.” The result was immediate.

On February 7, the official GameStop Twitter/X/whatever account posted a promo image for an Xbox demo day. Seems fine enough. But when referring to Game Pass, the company used the term “Microsoft Game Pass.” This is odd. Normally, I don’t think anyone would really care. However, we ain’t in normal times right now.

A retweet from Wario64 pointing out the phrase “Microsoft Game Pass” went viral online and theories were quickly spun up, with many pointing to this as more evidence that Microsoft was planning to kill the Xbox brand or use it for hardware only. Others suggested that it was Microsoft rebranding the subscription service— which grants you access to hundreds of games for a monthly fee—so it could be used on Switch or PlayStation.

This was almost certainly a simple mistake. Microsoft has told reporters writing stories about this whole thing that it had nothing to do with the verbiage GameStop tweeted out. But this wild speculation is again the result of one thing: the vacuum the Xbox team has left in place to be filled by conspiracy theories and rumor.

And it only got worse when GameStop subsequently deleted the tweet entirely.

This, as you might expect, convinced some that it was a mistake. It also convinced some “passionate” gamers that it was actually evidence that GameStop let the cat out of the bag too early and the death of Xbox as a brand really is coming soon. The end is nigh and all that.

Anyway, the reality is that GameStop likey made a mistake. Or, someone realized that using the term “Microsoft Game Pass” right now would set off a firestorm of speculation that would lead to more coverage and online discussion of an event that, let’s be real here, would never have been covered by most places or talked about online by gamers if this whole thing hadn’t spiraled out of control.

Correct. The point isn’t that GameStop’s mistake is in and of itself a big deal. It isn’t. The point instead is that the Xbox team has completely failed to get out in front of all of this speculation, allowing everyone’s pet theories to take the place of what should have been clear and proactive communication coming out from Microsoft as to just what in the hell it has planned for the Xbox brand.

Seriously, Spencer and team: just freaking say something, for the love of god.