For all its struggles in the last few years, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass represents a pretty phenomenal value as a subscription service. And you can take advantage of it even if you don’t have an Xbox or a gaming PC, giving it great accessibility. Well, Microsoft already undercut the value of the subscription. Now it’s delivering a crippling blow to the value of streaming.
According to a short and sweet update preceding the reveal of its new disc to digital service, Xbox has announced that Game Pass subscribers will no longer have access to unlimited streaming games. Starting in November, the Ultimate tier ($23 a month USD) will get 15 hours a month, Premium ($15) will get 10 hours, and Essential ($10) will get just five hours a month. With a new game or a dedicated player, you could blast through that Essential streaming pool in a single evening.
Oh, but don’t worry. If you use up your streaming minutes like you’re talking on a flip phone in 2003, you’ll be able to pay for more, on an hourly basis. Prices for this haven’t been announced yet.
And Microsoft has helpfully extended this offer to those who don’t subscribe to Game Pass. So I guess that would only make sense if you’ve purchased an Xbox game, that’s available on Game Pass, without subscribing to Game Pass….but you don’t have anything to play it on. Wow, that is a very small target to hit.
Microsoft says that this change comes because the service is getting more expensive to run as more people are streaming longer game sessions. (At current levels it says that the limits will impact just 4 percent of users.) But that seems like a pretty hard left turn from the goals of Game Pass streaming for years now. Isn’t all-streaming, all the time pretty much the goal of being able to access your Game Pass subscription everywhere?
If everything is an Xbox, is it only an Xbox for 15 hours a month? Unless you pay more, of course. At that point, it looks a lot like an old arcade machine, where you just keep putting in money if you want to keep playing. Suddenly the best value in gaming is looking like much less bang for the buck.
Microsoft may not have a choice in this action. It’s laid off thousands of employees, it’s sold or cut off many of the development studios it spent the better part of a decade acquiring. It seems like it’s time to pay the piper, and the costs are being passed along to Xbox players.
