There is alot of talk about Ubisoft coming to Game Pass, which along with EA and Microsofts own games makes the service pretty costly.
I can see a day where it becomes tiered.
A basic service which includes year old MS games and the base of AA and older games on GP being a cheaper, maybe $10 a month. Then you a level where MSs first party is day one, which maybe costs $15 a month, and then one with everything including EA and Ubi which could come ia around $18 per month.
Maybe even the cheaper service can be rolled in free for the first 3 months with every Xbox sold.
What’s your thoughts?
Maybe even a family plan for $20 where it can play on two consoles in the same house?
I think Phil suggested exactly a tiered option last year at some point. And if they got Ubisoft+ on board, adding it and EA’s day 1 option could be great, along with DLC packaged in for games too.
Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate. Could they add more tiers? Sure but I think Ultimate getting a price increase to $20 and including future expansions will be as far as it goes unless they add a family tier.
Frankly, I think Microsoft is still selling the public on the concept of Game Pass. They won’t want to muddle the message any further with additional tiers. I think they’re just going all in on increasing subscriptions, at just about any cost.
Remember, xCloud subsidizes the development and expansion of their server business. Gaming investment goes way beyond Xbox for Microsoft.
I think the general public is more than ok with the concept of a subscription gaming service. For years they have had spotify, Netflix and even software programs like Office, Xero etc which are subscription.
There are a few ways to attract more people.
Give extra value. But that’s hard to do as it costs more money. So offer the bigger service like one that includes EA, MS first party day one, Ubi and more third party day and date like Oblivion and The Medium etc. But you can charge more for that. $20 per month for the hardcore.
Make it even cheaper. A parent gets his kid a Series console, but wants to save some money so they can get him a basic package which includes all the older games and MS first party games 12 months after release. That could be $10 a month, but still gives hundreds of good games.
3 Add a family plan. Like Netflix you can have a family plan where you can share it on two or three xboxs which are linked via family settings, and this could be maybe $15 instead of $20 for the basic, or $30 instead of $40 for the full package.
Yes, we’re used to it but if you want to control the entire market, you need to appeal to gamers that may not always spend $120-180/year on games (plus the cost of a console). I think additional tiers may eventually happen but we’re probably not close to that yet.