Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass Friends & Family plan ends in August

Evelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone to Games@lemmy.world – 29 points –
Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass Friends & Family plan ends in August
theverge.com

This is obviously just a money grab at this point, isn't it?

News of the family plan ending in August comes just days after Microsoft bumped its overall Xbox Game Pass monthly prices. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate has move from $14.99 per month to $16.99 (€14.99 / £12.99).

14

A big ol "I told you so" to all the people back in the day on Reddit who called me stupid for saying "These prices are only temporary to draw you in so you keep subscribing." Everyone told me "Microsoft is being good for once, they're letting all of us normal folk play games we couldn't before, and we can play games we normally wouldn't buy!"

Which sure, but none of them saw that was temporary. Maybe I'm old and I remember how Netflix roped people in with the huge catalog of streaming titles and how every show you wanted to watch was there, and then when that catalogue dwindled to nothing and the price shot up.

Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man who happily pays for games still

Definitely a grumpy old man but that doesn't mean you aren't right.

Try telling people the same thing about how corporate consolidation is bad and is going to lead to long-term anti-consumer damage and they respond the same way largely.

The good news is the Lemmy community seems, as a whole, to have its head on its shoulders better about things like this.

I assume it's some combination of an older userbase, more tech literate, and people directly experiencing enshitification as the fundamental reason a large segment of the community migrated here.

I've seen about half and half. Half are praising Microsoft for monopolizing it and the other are against. Which yeah, so soon after reddit you'd think they'd be against complete control of a company. They all burn you eventually

I think gamers are just different based on taste. I tried the subscription and didn’t find anything I wanted to play (see my other comment). There are gamers who like it because they want to play games they wouldn’t buy. I buy games I want to play. I pay less than 120 bucks a year on games because I wait for discounts on Steam, I guess. For me the GamePass isn’t useful, as I’ve learned by trying it. For others, it is useful because they want to play all the games they can.

Given what you get for game pass, is it costing more really a deal killer? If you have the internet it's still super worth it, and if they double the price it'll still be pretty good.

I hope they don't kill family share feature also...

Is this service maybe better for people with an Xbox console? I tried Game Pass for PC and wasn't impressed. I won't be renewing. I'm glad I could try it for cheap to see what it's like, though.

For once I’m glad I have no friends.

We never got it in Germany anyway. Which was annoying, cause I would have really liked it for my best friend and I.

There's a way to pay one gamepass for two: assuming you're the one paying, you'll have to add your account to your friend's Xbox, and set it as your home console. From then, they should be able to enjoy a nearly full-access to gamepass (bar game streaming) as well as your game library.

We did that. The issue comes up once we wanna play in multi, haha.