Xbox Game Pass - PC And Ultimate - News, Stuff And Recommendations

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https://www.thurrott.com/xbox/20754...-few-pc-game-pass-details-heres-a-couple-more

We knew it was coming and now Microsoft is slowly starting to pull back the curtains on its GamePass offering for the PC. Announced in a blog post this morning, Microsoft is introducing Game Pass for PC but won’t reveal everything until June 9th.

Here’s what Microsoft is saying about the new service, PC Game Pass will give subscribers access to 100+ games from publishers like Bethesda, Deep Silver, Devolver Digital, Paradox Interactive, SEGA, and more. Further, just like on the console, new games from Xbox Game Studios will be included on the same day as their global release.

Xbox Game Pass for PC members will also receive discounts in the Microsoft Store on Windows of up to 20% on games currently in the library and up to 10% off related game DLC and add-ons.

As expected, Microsoft will continue to offer games via Steam and other stores. And of course, they will also offer their games through the Microsoft Store as well with the company saying that Gears 5 and all Age of Empires I, II & III: Definitive Editions, will be headed to Steam too.

And the last detail that Microsoft talks about is the fact that they will be enabling full support for native Win32 games via with Microsoft Store. This is a big step forward for gaming in the Microsoft store but also a big step away from UWP; Microsoft has slowly been moving away from the UWP model and this is one of the final last blows for the framework.

But Microsoft didn’t announce too many other details about GamePass on PC ahead of E3, but fret not, I have a few more to share.

At the conference, Microsoft will reveal the details of how you can actually sign up for Game Pass on the PC with the launch of the beta. According to people familiar with company plans, the PC version of Game Pass will be included with Ultimate Game Pass that was announced earlier this year for no additional cost.

Further, Microsoft is working on a specific PC Gaming app called Garrison, that will be used to help orchestrate the GamePass experience across multiple devices/stores. Phil Spencer had said previously that he was looking to overhaul the gaming experience in the Microsoft Store and the Garrison application is likely the fruit of that labor.

I have not heard yet if there will be a stand-alone SKU of PC Game Pass but it would seem odd to launch the new service without the option as not everyone needs the full Ultimate offering.

With E3 quickly approaching, Microsoft is getting some of the news out early regarding the event which goes to show that they have a big event planned. Next week, I will have an E3 preview post that will help set the stage for the event.
 
Put up early....


  • Astroneer
  • Battle Chasers: Nightwar
  • Bridge Constructor Portal
  • Everspace
  • Guacamelee 2
  • Hollow Knight
  • Lichtspeer: Double Speer Edition
  • Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight
  • Moonlighter
  • Neon Chrome
  • Old Man's Journey
  • Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
  • Shenmue
  • Shenmue 2
  • Silence - The Whispered World 2
  • Smoke and Sacrifice
  • SteamWorld Dig 2
  • Supermarket Shriek
  • Riverbond
  • Thimbleweed Park
  • Wizard of Legend
 
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Put up early....


  • Astroneer
  • Battle Chasers: Nightwar
  • Bridge Constructor Portal
  • Everspace
  • Guacamelee 2
  • Hollow Knight
  • Lichtspeer: Double Speer Edition
  • Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight
  • Moonlighter
  • Neon Chrome
  • Old Man's Journey
  • Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
  • Shenmue
  • Shenmue 2
  • Silence - The Whispered World 2
  • Smoke and Sacrifice
  • SteamWorld Dig 2
  • Supermarket Shriek
  • Riverbond
  • Thimbleweed Park
  • Wizard of Legend
wow, there are like 5 games I want to try!
 
Put up early....


  • Astroneer
  • Battle Chasers: Nightwar
  • Bridge Constructor Portal
  • Everspace
  • Guacamelee 2
  • Hollow Knight
  • Lichtspeer: Double Speer Edition
  • Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight
  • Moonlighter
  • Neon Chrome
  • Old Man's Journey
  • Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
  • Shenmue
  • Shenmue 2
  • Silence - The Whispered World 2
  • Smoke and Sacrifice
  • SteamWorld Dig 2
  • Supermarket Shriek
  • Riverbond
  • Thimbleweed Park
  • Wizard of Legend
Shenmue 3 coming? I know, "no plans".
 


D8tLqnxX4AMDQpe
 
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Just upgraded to Game Pass Ultimate. Had Gold till June 2020 and Game Pass till Feb 2020 (took amazon GP offer over xmas @ £47.99 for 12 months). Now with Ultimate, I've got Game Pass + XBL Gold till Feb 2021 without having to pay an extra penny! Wow, amazing offer. Worth doing even if you don't game on PC as you'll save money and get to play games early on Xbox.
 
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So apparently you can't install Game Pass beta for PC without the latest Windows 10 update 1903. Anyone tried it? I'm never big on being an early adopter for Windows service packs.
 
Game Pass is a reason to own the Xbox...period. Every month I’m trying out about 6-8 games for a few hours each. A few will stick. What’s surprising is it’s often the ones I wasn’t anticipating. The lineup over the next year of Day 1 games makes up for the cost of the console IMO.
 
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So apparently you can't install Game Pass beta for PC without the latest Windows 10 update 1903. Anyone tried it? I'm never big on being an early adopter for Windows service packs.

Yep I did it,went well but it took like 3 hours,probably because I kept using my PC and was watching a conference.No problem at all since,except the Gamepass Ultimate thing that I mentionned in the other post.
 
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That sounds nice but how do you keep the quality up at that rate? even with the studios they've purchased they don't have the bandwidth for that, of course they'd love to do that but how could you possibly manage that? it takes years even for small projects these days.
 
That sounds nice but how do you keep the quality up at that rate? even with the studios they've purchased they don't have the bandwidth for that, of course they'd love to do that but how could you possibly manage that? it takes years even for small projects these days.

Just spitballing it:
3 year release cycles for Gears + Halo + Fable locks up one quarter per year.
Returning to alternating year cadence for Forza and Horizon (not that I think that's necessarily a great idea) would lock up a second quarter per year.

That leaves the Age of Empires Studio , Compulsion, Double Fine, InXile, Minecraft, Ninja Theory, Obsidian, Rare and Undead Labs to come up with a combined two games per year. If each of those is on a four year dev cycle, they'll make it with an extra game to spare.

So with just what they have and release cycles that the studios mostly have hit in the past, it's not at all out of the question. I think counting Age of Empires and Minecraft is probably not reasonable, but if one of those studios has mutliple teams (as Ninja Theory has already been said to have) they may be able to replace that, and that's all before any new acquisitions.

[edit: I completely forgot the Initiative. So, yeah, mathematically they have the studios to pull it off, but we'll have to see if they can deliver]
 
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In fact, I'll go one further and say that not only do they mathematically have the studios to pull it off, the fact that they're saying that I expect means that they already have it scheduled out that way. It's not happening this year, obviously, but I expect at least by 2021, they'll have the quarterly releases in place. I'll also predict that they've already got at least inroads made in the other thing they've talked about, purchasing a Japanese dev studio.
 
Downloaded Metro Exodus (still cant believe this is already on game pass!) and holy s***... looks incredible,
unfortunately the shooting still feels terrible but i can tell i will finish this purely based on story and visuals
 
That sounds nice but how do you keep the quality up at that rate? even with the studios they've purchased they don't have the bandwidth for that, of course they'd love to do that but how could you possibly manage that? it takes years even for small projects these days.

All these studios are hiring more people and expanding.
- Playground is expanding to have 2 large teams
- Obsidian is expanding to have one large and one smaller team. Smaller team led by Josh Sawyer.
- Rare has been quietly building a 2nd team
- Ninja Theory has 3 teams (2 of them smaller) however has been expanding in overall size
- Double Fine has multiple teams

Microsoft also has 4 teams in Cali where there’s a lot of contractors. Can scale up teams quickly for full production.

So even before adding more studios (which they still are doing) there’s more projects going on at once than studios.
 
Just spitballing it:
3 year release cycles for Gears + Halo + Fable locks up one quarter per year.
Returning to alternating year cadence for Forza and Horizon (not that I think that's necessarily a great idea) would lock up a second quarter per year.

That leaves the Age of Empires Studio , Compulsion, Double Fine, InXile, Minecraft, Ninja Theory, Obsidian, Rare and Undead Labs to come up with a combined two games per year. If each of those is on a four year dev cycle, they'll make it with an extra game to spare.

So with just what they have and release cycles that the studios mostly have hit in the past, it's not at all out of the question. I think counting Age of Empires and Minecraft is probably not reasonable, but if one of those studios has mutliple teams (as Ninja Theory has already been said to have) they may be able to replace that, and that's all before any new acquisitions.

[edit: I completely forgot the Initiative. So, yeah, mathematically they have the studios to pull it off, but we'll have to see if they can deliver]


Timing it out is an issue as well and that's why he said some thing will take longer etc, I'm glad he said that they'd "love to do that" vs saying they are going to do that. With a AAA game taking at least 3 years this gen it's probably only going to take longer next gen which makes me wonder with GP being the focus if the non GAAS or MP focused stuff is going to be reduced to mostly AA games. They want to give people a reason to stay subscribed and a high end single player game won't really do that since you can finish it and end your subscription before the next billing cycle comes around.
 
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Timing it out is an issue as well and that's why he said some thing will take longer etc, I'm glad he said that they'd "love to do that" vs saying they are going to do that. With a AAA game taking at least 3 years this gen it's probably only going to take longer next gen which makes me wonder with GP being the focus if the non GAAS or MP focused stuff is going to be reduced to mostly AA games. They want to give people a reason to stay subscribed and a high end single player game won't really do that since you can finish it and end your subscription before the next billing cycle comes around.

I think they can easily crank out Forza, Forza Horizon, Gears, Halo, and a Fable game (I'm assuming that's what Playground's game is) every three years. I assume also that the Initiative should be able to crank out a game every three years. If every other studio is on a four year cycle, that's four games a year already. Obviously they'll have to do some alignment on the release schedule to space them out accordingly, but I think that they're probably already doing that groundwork. I think we'll see quarterly releases for sure in 2021 and beyond, and honestly I think they're holding back on stuff they might have been able to get out in the next year to set that up alongside the Scarlett launch. Sony not showing up to E3 probably also helped in that regard.

The other two games a year in this plan won't all be AAA games, of course, but I don't think they said it would be - just that they want a first party release every quarter. I think the logic behind it is that, eventually, they want to say: "Hey, you can spend $120 on our two big releases each year, plus pay $59.99 for Live, or you can pay the same $180 and get two big releases, two AAish releases, plus play hundreds of other games on Xbox and PC." Bringing in studios that do things they're not necessarily good at themselves (e.g., Obsidian and Ninja Theory) helps broaden the appeal somewhat, too - because someone who might want to get subscribed for the Outer Worlds release may find themselves intrigued by stuff like Tacoma and The Turing Test, for example, and decide to stick around.
 
I think they can easily crank out Forza, Forza Horizon, Gears, Halo, and a Fable game (I'm assuming that's what Playground's game is) every three years. I assume also that the Initiative should be able to crank out a game every three years. If every other studio is on a four year cycle, that's four games a year already. Obviously they'll have to do some alignment on the release schedule to space them out accordingly, but I think that they're probably already doing that groundwork. I think we'll see quarterly releases for sure in 2021 and beyond, and honestly I think they're holding back on stuff they might have been able to get out in the next year to set that up alongside the Scarlett launch. Sony not showing up to E3 probably also helped in that regard.

The other two games a year in this plan won't all be AAA games, of course, but I don't think they said it would be - just that they want a first party release every quarter. I think the logic behind it is that, eventually, they want to say: "Hey, you can spend $120 on our two big releases each year, plus pay $59.99 for Live, or you can pay the same $180 and get two big releases, two AAish releases, plus play hundreds of other games on Xbox and PC." Bringing in studios that do things they're not necessarily good at themselves (e.g., Obsidian and Ninja Theory) helps broaden the appeal somewhat, too - because someone who might want to get subscribed for the Outer Worlds release may find themselves intrigued by stuff like Tacoma and The Turing Test, for example, and decide to stick around.

I don't know about a 3 year cycle for a big AAA title but it all depends on what hey are going for, there are games this gen that have taken 5 years to make and I would think that would only increase next gen but we'll see. It's not a bad thing to target but I just don't know if it can be done due to the nature of the industry and the fact that quite a few of the studios that were picked up aren't necessarily the cream of the crop, I'm sure there is a lot or retooling going on to try to get them up to snuff.
 
I think they can easily crank out Forza, Forza Horizon, Gears, Halo, and a Fable game (I'm assuming that's what Playground's game is) every three years. I assume also that the Initiative should be able to crank out a game every three years. If every other studio is on a four year cycle, that's four games a year already. Obviously they'll have to do some alignment on the release schedule to space them out accordingly, but I think that they're probably already doing that groundwork. I think we'll see quarterly releases for sure in 2021 and beyond, and honestly I think they're holding back on stuff they might have been able to get out in the next year to set that up alongside the Scarlett launch. Sony not showing up to E3 probably also helped in that regard.

The other two games a year in this plan won't all be AAA games, of course, but I don't think they said it would be - just that they want a first party release every quarter. I think the logic behind it is that, eventually, they want to say: "Hey, you can spend $120 on our two big releases each year, plus pay $59.99 for Live, or you can pay the same $180 and get two big releases, two AAish releases, plus play hundreds of other games on Xbox and PC." Bringing in studios that do things they're not necessarily good at themselves (e.g., Obsidian and Ninja Theory) helps broaden the appeal somewhat, too - because someone who might want to get subscribed for the Outer Worlds release may find themselves intrigued by stuff like Tacoma and The Turing Test, for example, and decide to stick around.
Not so sure. Forza Motorsport is already a every 2 years game and its quality is dropping fast while getting further and further behind others in a similar genre. It doesnt even need to be every 3 years. In the age we are in, this game needs a quality release product and then a good live service content roadmap and it could be a 1 every gen product that keeps you engaged...great for the gamepass ethos MS is focused on.
 
Not so sure. Forza Motorsport is already a every 2 years game and its quality is dropping fast while getting further and further behind others in a similar genre. It doesnt even need to be every 3 years. In the age we are in, this game needs a quality release product and then a good live service content roadmap and it could be a 1 every gen product that keeps you engaged...great for the gamepass ethos MS is focused on.

Well, yeah, I had mentioned earlier in fact that I didn't think them doing it every other year was necessarily a good idea, just that they could definitely pull it off every three. I didn't even think of the Forza as a game that they just continually update model, though, which is a pretty damn good idea. I don't think they'll go that direction, though - I am kind of expecting it to be a three year cadence but I'd rather you be right than me.
 
Well, yeah, I had mentioned earlier in fact that I didn't think them doing it every other year was necessarily a good idea, just that they could definitely pull it off every three. I didn't even think of the Forza as a game that they just continually update model, though, which is a pretty damn good idea. I don't think they'll go that direction, though - I am kind of expecting it to be a three year cadence but I'd rather you be right than me.
It is a perfect game for a long term service...cars, tracks - both real & fantasy, new features. It is a perfect game for limited time events that all live services have too.

But I'm sure Forza 8 will be the same old piss poor post launch madness.
 
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