The Video Game Critic

http://www.polygon.com/2017/2/28/14761576/xbox-game-pass-xbox-one-microsoft

Xbox One has a Game Pass, allowing access to a library of games by subscription.

Wow. Really interesting. I'm guessing it's gonna be a huge hit.

I wonder if you will have to pay for xbox live for the ability to use this pay-to-use service?

To be honest I think this is where all media will soon be consumed. Video games will be no different.

Sut wrote:To be honest I think this is where all media will soon be consumed. Video games will be no different.

The on-demand subscription library is a pretty good model for both business and consumer.

The consumer budgets in and pays for the subscription, content creators find a way to monetize older media, there is not much need to market games (just the service) and it generates guaranteed income. It could even have tiers for heavier consumers. New games wouldn't roll onto the "Game Pass" for a period of time, say a year, to not hurt retail sales. Like with the many television media subscriptions, consumers have to be careful about spending lots of money unconsciously with multiple subscriptions, games would cycle on and off the service (this particular one has a 30 day offline feature so the game isn't instantly gone), and most games would be newer and more mainstream ones, not niche games.

Hasnt gamefly been doing this for a while though? I never hear anything about them, then again, I dont think you can use that service through your consoles.

https://www.gamefly.com/#!/streaming/how-it-works

https://www.gamefly.com/#!/games/

Why does everyone, on every website I've seen (not just here) keep comparing this to Netflix. It's essentially Playstation Now, and that's old and getting ready to die. This is like if someone said "Sony is offering a new online service where you download games on a PC, from all kinds of publishers, and there are tons and tons and tons of games on there, and there are sales all the time dropping the prices by a mile, and you can get tons of games in early access, and there are achievements, and hats to buy, and mods. Yeah, it's like a bigger version of Origin." No, it's like Steam you would say. This is like that. This isn't like Netflix for games. This is just like Playstation Now, but on Xbox and with downloading.

Atarifever wrote:Why does everyone, on every website I've seen (not just here) keep comparing this to Netflix. It's essentially Playstation Now, and that's old and getting ready to die. This is like if someone said "Sony is offering a new online service where you download games on a PC, from all kinds of publishers, and there are tons and tons and tons of games on there, and there are sales all the time dropping the prices by a mile, and you can get tons of games in early access, and there are achievements, and hats to buy, and mods. Yeah, it's like a bigger version of Origin." No, it's like Steam you would say. This is like that. This isn't like Netflix for games. This is just like Playstation Now, but on Xbox and with downloading.

I came here to say pretty much this.

This reminds EXACTLY of Playstation now...except with downloading. I find it about as exciting as a pair of jeans with buttons instead of a zipper...

It seems a lot more reasonably priced than PlayStation now.

Atarifever wrote:Why does everyone, on every website I've seen (not just here) keep comparing this to Netflix.

I pulled it right from the Polygon headline. You can certainly argue its not new, and its not news, but it is a subscription based library of media available for download, and 'so, kinda like Netflix for video games' is a totally reasonable and appropriate shorthand.