Can we also, since I think it fits perfectly here, talk about the “new, improved, and fantastic” Game Pass rebranding? I’m so far past the point of caring that I can laugh about it. Both with Forza Motorsport and Microsoft.
For those who don’t know, Game Pass Ultimate now costs $30 a month. You don’t get anything special in return, but it’s 50% more expensive.
It all fits perfectly with the idea of ​​exploiting gamers as much as possible, not focusing on game quality, and not listening to real feedback.
Apparently, we all have to switch to Fortnite?! I’ve never played the game, and I don’t want to play it… but apparently, I now have a paid subscription. Thanks.
Is this because they’ve acquired Activision and think they have a monopoly? That we’re just paying for it?
Coincidentally, I renewed my Ultimate subscription for two years a few days ago. I always do it thinking, “It can’t get any cheaper anyway.” I was currently paying €150 a year. That’s still okay. It’s not really about the money for me, it’s more about the value of the whole thing. The balance has completely gone.
I do know that this is the last time I’ll ever renew. Whether I’ll want to deal with a new Xbox is also unlikely.
What do you think?
I think it’s off-topic
Indeed & it’s also misleading . Yeah Ultimate is more expensive but it does have more features (now includes UbiSoft + Classics which is a $€ 8/month sub on its own & higher resolution cloud streaming among other things).
Added features that you may or may not want. Personally, there is nothing of value being added for the additional cost. Judging by the public outcry, I am not the only one who thinks this.
A deal is only a deal if you are receiving something you want or need.
They could have just made another tier called Ultimate + , or something, instead of forcing customers to pay for things they don’t need.
My sub runs out next April and won’t renew based on current pricing. Gway with that nonsense
In the UK Ultimate has gone from £15 to £23 per month, which is a more than 50% increase. Those extra features don’t make it worthwhile for everyone. MS have tried to spin this as a big value bonus after listening to the fans, but like with FM8, they aren’t hearing. They’re running out of feet to shoot.
And now they are really pushing the subscriptions heavily when you sign in on your XBox.
Funny enough, even though I have an active Ultimate subscription, I am getting ads for Premium. Maybe MS is trying to tell me something. lol
How can Xbox justify charging ÂŁ22.99 for the Xbox game pass ultimate when PlayStation which is their biggest rival charges ÂŁ13.49 for exactly the same benefits.
But, does Playstation give you the Ubisoft back catalog? LOL LOL
Seriously though, MS can charge what ever they want, and we can choose to cancel or let our subs expire without renewing as a good number of people have already done.
I had a feeling that once Forza was no longer an XBox exclusive, the writing was on the wall.
As far as I am aware they do but please don’t quote me on this
If true (and I have no reason to doubt you) that makes it even more rediculous. It looks like my attempt a subtle humor wasn’t all that funny….
Wow, just wow!
I agree totally about Microsoft being totally screwed once Forza went south lol
I’ve been gaming exclusively on PC for a few years now after being a lifelong console guy (and Xbox supporter from day one). What caused the switch in my case was me finally getting tired of the lack of peripheral support on Xbox, and the much wider variety of racing games on PC.
I switched from Ultimate to PC game pass back when the latter was still $9.99 a month, as it still gave me most of the benefits I wanted for a reasonable price. When they bumped it up to $11.99, it made me look at my gaming habits and I realized I wasn’t really using a lot of the benefits. I tend to play games for a long period of time once I get into them, and I’d sometimes go months at a time without downloading anything new from GP (not sure if that says more about me or the games available…lol). I finally realized that it’s cheaper for me to just buy a game outright rather than spend months “renting" it on Game Pass, or paying a monthly fee and getting nothing at all.
There’s no way in Hades that I’d pay $30 a month for Ultimate now. I read an article the other day that said something that I really agree with: I just don’t understand who it’s supposed to be for anymore:
You could buy brand new games like Black Ops 7, Gears, Fable, and Horizon 6, and still have enough money left over to pay Xbox’s online multiplayer tax. If you’re in it for the seemingly endless supply of indie games available, you could buy A LOT of indie games for $360 a year. And if you’re psyched about the newly-added Fortnite benefits because you’re a daily Fortnite player, isn’t that pretty much all you’re playing anyway?
Sure there’s still PC Game Pass which is far cheaper, but if it wasn’t worth it for me at $12 a month, it’s sure not going to draw me back in for $16.50 with absolutely zero added benefits.
This feels like Microsoft trying to capitalize on Game Pass’s popularity and milking subscribers in the hopes that they’ll just let their subscriptions roll over and not notice that they’re getting fleeced.
With recent reports of Microsoft’s site bogging down to a crawl from people trying to either cancel or downgrade their subscriptions, it seems people aren’t going to just roll over and take it this time.
No, they don’t offer the same benefits.
A look online would tell you that.
My ultimate just ran out. Ended up just buying FM23 for ÂŁ17 and got 3 months core membership with some MS reward points for MP/Rivals.
Speaking of reward points, that’s another thing that bugs me: Microsoft repeatedly decreasing the amount of reward points you can earn from doing different things. I was never one of those people who went down the checklist every month and maximized all the points I could earn. Still, through just normal gameplay and doing things like using the Xbox app or the occasional Bing search, I’d usually get enough to pay for 3 or 4 months of GP Ultimate throughout the year.
No way I can do that now. And they advertise that you can now earn up to $100 in point redemptions with GP Ultimate - which is double what you can earn with the lower tiers. But you’re paying $15 more every month for the opportunity to redeem an extra $50 per year… lol. The whole thing just doesn’t make any sense.