If you’re one of the folks still confused or skeptical about Xbox releasing games on Steam or if you aren’t in these big Western countries, there’s a simple and good reason why it’s needed - Better Regional Pricing.
A few of the xbox games are on sale right now.
Here’s Ori WOTW at 67% off on MS Store/Xbox App
660 INR In USD: 9 Dollars. Before Discount: 27.5 USD
Here’s Ori WOTW at the same 67% off on Steam
230 INR In USD: 3 Dollars. Before discount: 10 USD
That’s a 300% difference.
MS store alongside being simply barebones and plain annoying as a store and user experience also has bad to no competitive regional pricing that Steam has had for ages now.
This means whenever there’s a game on MS Store or Gamepass that I wanna buy or it’s on a sale, as a PC guy, I’d rather do that on Steam.
I’ve been playing FH4 on Gamepass but I am glad that it’s coming to steam so that I don’t have to pay inordinately bad pricing on the MS Store for something I can get at a cheaper price on a superior store and user experience. Of course in this specific instance, there’s no cross-save for FH4 on steam but I expect the majority of games that shall eventually launch day 1 on MS Store/Gamepass and Steam to have cross-save, cross-play cross-everything because they’ve been built to be on both stores ever since their launch. At least that’s what I hope.
TL;DR, Much better regional pricing is one of the bigger reasons why we should want more Xbox games on Steam, alongside other reasons that are obvious.
Agree! Regional pricing is important to reach audiences all over the world.
Though in regards to Steam; a new digital game for €70 is really expensive. Gears Tactics and Gears 5 weren’t ever going to find a large audience with that pricetag. I wonder how publishers are going to sell games if they keep pricing their games so high. I’d only spend that amount of money if I knew for sure it would be a banger of game in which I can spend hours and hours.
Gears 5 is especially bad lol, it costs more than 4 times more on MS Store compared to Steam, it’s crazy. I think PC shall become more and more preferable for price-conscious people going forward, despite PC having gone digital long ago and costing more upfront. The deals are always better, and the choice of where you buy these games from is also more varied as opposed to One Store Rules All on console. EGS for all its faults is still giving me amazing deals and free games every week, and that’s something only PC provides at the moment and was born out of need for competition however contrived it has been, so there’s some proposition there.
And yeah, more price consciousness shall spring up this gen, and I think services like Gamepass will champion that mindset of “should I even be paying this kind of madness for these games individually?” MS wants to bank on that growing prices and also the growing distaste for it, no matter how inevitable it is. But I definitely don’t want retail as an option to go away, and I’m glad Phil has specifically promised that it won’t.
