XBOX pass coming to PC discussion.

Hello everyone,

So it seems like XBOX pass is coming to pc soon enough. For anyone who don't know what this pass is, it's basically just like a spotify subscription or netflix, you buy a small amount of money per month, to access multiple songs/movies, and now it's coming for games too.

And as it seems to me, most of games included with the passe are indie games from small studios, so what do you guys think? it may be a good opportunity for indie game dev's ? or this kind of strategy won't work on games?

 

It might work with certain types of games, but it is hard to say how small studios will do with it. The games that might benefit from a flat rate subscription are short story games that people are likely to only play once. A subscription would make it easy to play a bunch of different small games, so some gamers might really like that. However, if the service pays developers based on hours of playtime, it would be difficult for those developers to make any money with it.

 

Sucks, I hate it. Just another thing that's going to devalue games in the eyes of the consumer, making it even harder for smaller developers.

 

Right, specially that is hard to take place between other addictive Triple A titles, most of the games in the pass won't be as fancy so they may get a bad reputation making people avoiding them (the same case in XBOX right now )

Yeah, sadly...Xbox will be looking for cheap made games to maximize profits which will give gamers a negative impression on indie games industry as u mentionned, you can't sell a game you worked on for months for the price they will be offering, I think some devs may use the opportunity to make a ton of easy games which take one or two weeks to finish and sell them for low prices ignoring the good reputation.

 

We already saw something very similar to this in the form of Amazon Underground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Underground
https://www.pocketgamer.biz/mobile-...zon-shutting-down-its-underground-initiative/

 

If games will be same games from xbox but ported to PC, I don't see it catching very well.
You can see already lots of critique going on on steam itself.

But for PC dedicated titles, maybe ... my opinion is unsettled here.

 

Interesting, never heard about it, but maybe XboX can do better, they do have a lot more experience in the games industry, who know what they will be bringing.

I am not sure, but it seems like the current xbox version available on windows 10 do contain only games made for console.

 

Microsoft also has a good deal of experience developing failures.

 

Question will be, what is the reception of PC users to that.

 

I think there will be a "hype" at first then after that no one is gonna buy it again, that's in case they use the same games they are offering on Xbox right now, the quality of those is far from good, even tho considering the price, it's not what you pay for great well made games.

 

Okay, I researched a little deeper for this. All of the games have to be made for console because the app that allows you to "play" games on Windows 10 isn't actually running the games on Windows 10. It's streaming them to Windows 10 from your physical console (at least I think that's what's happening based on the link below and the Windows Store entry).

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-app

 

The thing I'm puzzled with is AAA have prices that way above 80$ (base price, plus microtransactions/season passes or whatever) and that's more or less acceptable these days.

But indies charging over 20$ is an automatic outrage. (or if we're talking mobile, charging anything is an outrage, although that's kinda a different market)

 

Ah, so it is just streaming console to win 10. Meh ...

 

Tell me straight when / if I am wrong but ...

Saying that, it is common It think misconception in my opinion that cost of making games increases is justified, which defends such prices. But in fact, if you think about it, we have tons of available assets. Specially for studios, with long market existence, over years. For example sounds. How many times you hear same sounds in films and games.

Graphics, and textures, these been pretty much done over and over. Unless having completely new model. Unless going with new tech, like Crytec did.

Modeling, we have tools to automate making models, people and animals. Of course still hand modeling is required in many cases. We have mostly same weapons in FPS games across each iterations, with some modifications. Increasing number of polygons smoothing is not that complex, having right tools.
Probably proper rigging may be time consuming.

World generators and procedural generation done over many times. Not outside reach for big studios.

Algorithms, lot of available online. Including from research papers. Of course need write and implement.them.

So using real famous actors will probably cost major chunk.
And ... advertising, com on, this is what near 50% cost this days?
I don't think anyone recognizable and successful would need such % to get into the world.
Unless trying to feed another crap to consumers.

Ok lets add inflation on top, in comparison from 10-20 years past. So technically 80$ is cheap. But you don't get CD / DVD anymore. So you don't buy goods. But mostly service this days.And is not reliable.

I think, what is hurting indie prices, to be acceptable any higher, is whole Early Access surrounding.
What I mean, if most games in EA charge 15$ - 20$ and end up in abandon wear state, this leads to high outrage, doe to lack of met expectations.
Hence people perhaps lack of trust in EA games, and don't like being potentially charged for unfinished game state.

 

Well, while you can stream with it yes, there is also the play anywhere https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/xbox-play-anywhere which allows you to play them on your computer (not streamed). So I would guess that they will be using the game pass for pc games that they have on the store; otherwise, it doesn't make much sense to do it. I've never liked those kind of subscriptions since you never own a game, but people seem to buy and use them unfortunately.