Xbox Game Pass offers subscribers access to a massive number of titles, and it looks like a new one has leaked ahead of an official announcement. Multiple Game Pass subscribers have reported receiving a push notification on the app related to Shadow Warrior 3. The notification makes it sound like Shadow Warrior 3 is available now, though that is not the case on Game Pass itself. The most likely scenario here is that Xbox accidentally sent the notification ahead of an actual announcement, and the game is going to be announced for the service in the near future!
An image of the push notification was shared on Twitter by user @Komedias1 and can be found embedded below.
Úgy néz ki, hogy hamarosan a Shadow Warrior 3 is csatlakozik a #GamePass-hez.#Xbox pic.twitter.com/qMyh3FVP3E
— Komédiás (@Komedias1) January 6, 2023
As of this writing, Microsoft has not addressed the leak, nor has publisher Devolver Digital. That’s not too surprising, but hopefully the companies won’t keep fans waiting too long on an official announcement. The notification has drawn a lot of interest on social media, and it seems like a lot of people are excited for the game to release on Xbox Game Pass!
For those unfamiliar with the title, Shadow Warrior 3 released last year on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. Developed by Flying Wild Hog, the third series entry once again puts players in the role of protagonist Lo Wang. The first-person shooter’s reviews seemed to be generally lower than the previous entry in the series, but overall reception seemed to be mostly good. For anyone that might have held off on purchasing the game as a result, a Game Pass release could be the perfect opportunity to see what it has to offer.
Until we get some kind of official announcement, fans will just have to wait patiently! Subscribers shouldn’t have too much trouble finding something to keep them busy until the game’s addition. In the meantime, readers can find our previous coverage of Shadow Warrior 3 right here.
Did you receive a push notification about Shadow Warrior 3 coming to Game Pass? Do you plan on checking out the game? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter and on Hive at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!
The official Xbox app has now revealed the first batch of games that will leave Xbox Game Pass in January 2023 (the initial set of removals for the year), and it includes five games such as Nobody Saves The World and Windjammers 2.
We’ve listed the removal dates as January 15th — that’s the expected date for every game — but Microsoft hasn’t actually confirmed this yet, so we’ll let you know if there are any changes later this week.
Xbox Game Pass: Leaving Soon (January 15th, 2023)
As always, Xbox Game Pass members can get a discount of (at least) 20% on these titles before they’re removed.
You’ve probably noticed we haven’t had any Xbox Game Pass additions in quite some time now, and that’s apparently because Microsoft was waiting until early January for the next batch. Hopefully we’ll hear something this week!
Just because the spooky season has passed doesn’t mean Microsoft’s Netflix-like subscription service is fresh out of spice to stimulate your gaming senses for the rest of November. While November’s assortment of games isn’t quite as loaded as last month’s helpings, it does feature a diverse hodgepodge of games, including one of the best-written titles to come out of 2022.
Here’s everything coming to and leaving Xbox Game Pass in the coming weeks:
November 15
Pentiment (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Somerville (Cloud, Console and PC)
Vampire Survivors (Cloud)
November 17
Dune: Spice Wars (Game Preview) (PC)
Ghostlore (Game Preview) (PC)
Lapin (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Norco (Cloud and Console)
November 22
Gungrave G.O.R.E (Cloud, Console, and PC)
November 29
Insurgency: Sandstorm (Cloud and Console)
Soccer Story (Cloud, Console, and PC)
November 30
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (PC)
Read More: A Stunning Southern Dystopia Is One Of The Best-Written Games Of The Year
The creme de la creme of this month’s assortment of Game Pass games isn’t the spice melange of the Dune real-time strategy game but rather a little-known text-based point-and-click adventure game called Norco. You play as Kay, a 20-year-old woman who returns to her childhood home after the passing of her mother from cancer. When you aren’t completing your mother’s half-finished chores with the help of a self-aware robot named Million, you’re searching the industrial underbelly of New Orleans for your brother Blake, who went missing shortly after your mother’s passing. In our review of Norco, Kotaku said the game is “a stunning piece of magical realism” with exceptional dialogue that “plays its cards with enormous subtlety.”
If you missed out on playing this gem when it was a Game Pass PC offering back in March, now’s your chance to give this Disco Elysium-esque game a try. Fair warning, Norco contains instances of violence, suicide, substance use, and mature language.
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If you’re in the upper echelon of Game Pass’ Ultimate tier and feel a tingle in your spine at the fact that “LeBron James frame data” is a phrase you can say now that makes sense, you get the added bonus of a free MultiVersus MVP pack drop this month. Obviously, reaping the benefits of this bundle’s variant, ring-out, and banners requires you to have the MultiVersus installed on your gaming device. And all Game Pass subscribers will get a bounty of DLC updates for The Elder Scrolls Online: Firesong (available today), The Elder Scrolls Online: Dark Heart of Skyrim Celebration (available on November 17), and Dead by Daylight: Forged in Fog (available on November 22).
Game Pass, much like the saying “out with the old in with the new,” is losing some games to make way for the new hotness. The following games are going back into the Xbox vault as of November 30:
Archvale (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Deeeer Simulator (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Final Fantasy XIII-2 (Console and PC)
Mind Scanners (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Mortal Shell (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Undungeon (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Warhammer 40,000 Battlesector (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Microsoft is making big moves and Game Pass is just one piece of the puzzle. The subscription service has kept Xbox Series X/S relevant despite the lack of recent conversation-stealing first-party exclusives, but the company seems to be setting its sights on the mobile space for its next big gaming push. While PS5 console warriors argue over Call of Duty exclusivity, Microsoft is positioning Apple and Google as its real rivals.
That may just be a convenient pivot amid unprecedented antitrust scrutiny as it attempts to get its $69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard through regulators in the U.S. and abroad. But it’s a convincing one when you consider that Apple’s total revenue from gaming surpassed both Microsoft and Nintendo last year despite the fact that the iPhone manufacturer doesn’t actually make games. Here are nine interesting takeaways from recent earnings calls, regulatory filings, and interviews that begin to fill in a picture of Xbox’s present and future.
Game Pass is growing a ton on PC
While Game Pass’ best library of games is on console, it’s actually the PC side of the service that’s building up steam. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirmed on the company’s most recent earnings call that PC Game Pass subscribers grew 159 percent from a year ago. The PC version’s game library has certainly improved in recent months, but the larger install base is likely an even bigger factor. “We’re seeing incredible growth on PC which is really where we’re focused,” Spencer said at WSJ Tech Live.
Game Pass is reaching its limit on console
Despite reaching 25 million subscribers overall, Game Pass’ overall growth is still far below Microsoft’s initial expectations. As Axios reports, the company was targeting 73 percent growth for the year ending June 2022, and instead only reached 28 percent.
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On Xbox Series X/S, meanwhile, Spencer seems fairly confident that Game Pass will never be more than 15 percent of Microsoft’s total content and services revenue. “I don’t think it gets bigger than that,” Spencer said at WSJ Tech Live. “At some point you’ve just reached everyone on console who wants to subscribe.”
Microsoft knows it’s overdue for a big first-party exclusive
Part of the reason behind Game Pass stalling on console could be the lack of major exclusives. Spencer recently admitted that they’ve been missing overall from the company’s lineup recently. “One thing we’ve heard loud and clear is that it’s been too long since we’ve shipped kind of what people would say is a big first-party game,” he said on the Same Brain podcast. “We can have our excuses on covid and other things but in the end I know people invest in our platform and they want to have great games.”
At the same time, he suggested the era of covid-related game delays was over, at least for Microsoft first-party studios. Don’t expect the great holiday drought of 2022 to persist into next year, in other words. While Starfield and Redfall are both due out in the first half of next year, major releases like Fable, Forza Motorsport 8, Avowed, and others are still waiting in the wings.
The rumored streaming device for TVs was shelved (literally)
Project Keystone was supposed to be a dongle for TVs that would let you stream Game Pass in the living room without needing an Xbox. It was rumored to be coming right around the corner, but Spencer confirmed it was actually canceled in favor of more limited solutions through Smart TV makers like Samsung. That Keystone prototype he keeps on his shelf? Not going into production. “Will we do a streaming device at some point?” he said at WSJ Tech Live. “I suspect we will, but I think it’s years away.”
The company’s serious about an Xbox store on mobile
Microsoft hinted at its ambitions to begin competing in the smartphone space earlier this year, but a recent regulatory filing in the UK lays out the plans more clearly. “[Buying Activision Blizzard] will improve Microsoft’s ability to create a next generation game store which operates across a range of devices, including mobile as a result of the addition of Activision Blizzard’s content,” the company wrote in October.
Spencer doubled down on that vision at WSJ Tech Live, criticizing the 30 percent cut Apple and Google take of in-app purchases on their platforms, and arguing that the $69 billion acquisition is a play for making mobile more competitive rather than getting a stranglehold on the console market. “We have to break that duopoly of only two storefronts available on the major [mobile] platforms,” he said. It’s not clear how the company plans to do that, but more acquisitions, potentially in the mobile space, aren’t off the table.
Xbox Series X and S consoles are sold at a huge loss
While it’s been well understood that console makers often sell the devices at a loss, especially early in a new release cycle, we’ve never known exactly how big those losses were. In no uncertain terms, Spencer recently copped to the Xbox Series X and S losing Microsoft between $100 and $200 on average.
That’s the company’s defense for charging the same 30 percent fees on Xbox that it complains about Apple and Google charging on mobile, where smartphones are sold at a profit. At the same time, it’s also made the Xbox Series S a huge success. The company announced during its most recent earnings call that half of all the $300 Xbox’s users are completely new to the ecosystem.
Prices will go up in the future
Don’t expect that level of discount forever though. While Spencer didn’t get specific, he hinted during WSJ Tech Live that price hikes are coming. “We’ve held price on console, we’ve held price on games for us, and our subscription,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to do that forever, I think at some point we’ll have to raise prices on some things.”
While he didn’t say which things those would be, Game Pass and individual game prices seem like the obvious bets. Subscription services across the board have been increasing their renewal costs recently, and Spencer pointed out that the $60 price point, which Microsoft held for Halo Infinite, is outdated and doesn’t reflect the growing costs of development or the additional hours many players get out of modern games.
Call of Duty is staying on PlayStation
Microsoft has been clearer than ever in recent weeks that it has no plans to make Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive. “It’s not a plan of, okay, we’re going to bait and switch somebody where they gotta play on the cloud or in two or three years we’re going to pull [Call of Duty],” Spencer said at WSJ Tech Live. “As long as there’s a PlayStation out there to ship to, our intent is that we continue to ship Call of Duty on PlayStation,” he said on Same Brain. He likened it to Minecraft which continues to be supported on PlayStation, and said he’d even like to see Call of Duty on Switch in some form.
Don’t expect a Microsoft VR metaverse anytime soon
“For me building a metaverse that looks like a meeting room—I just find that’s not where I want to spend most of my time,” Spencer said at WSJ Tech Live, despite his boss announcing Microsoft Meetings integration with Meta’s Horizons VR dystopia just weeks prior. The veteran gaming executive said he thinks companies should work on perfecting 2D gaming metaverses before moving them into virtual reality.
Xbox fans have been waiting for a glimpse of a new, standalone Game Pass streaming device called “Keystone” since it was first teased at E3 2021. Now Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer may have just given it to them in his latest shelfie. It looks like a micro-Xbox Series S.
Microsoft has slowly been bringing Xbox Game Pass to more and more devices through cloud streaming. First it was phones. More recently it was certain brands of Smart TVs like Samsung’s. Earlier this year, the company confirmed it was working on a smaller add-on that people could buy to stream games to any display. It’s called Keystone, and so far Microsoft hasn’t shown what it looks like, possibly until today.
“Vault Boy left the shelter and stopped by my office to celebrate the #Fallout25 Anniversary,” Spencer tweeted along with a photo of a bunch of Xbox swag on a shelf. “Congratulations to the @Fallout @Bethesda teams on this major milestone for an iconic franchise.” The Microsoft executive has made a habit out of teasing upcoming reveals in the background of his pictures, however, and it didn’t take fans long to spot a strange-looking white device near the top:
It looks exactly like an Xbox Series S, only much smaller. A mark on the left could be an Xbox symbol while one on the right seems like a USB port. It seems similar in proportion to a Google Chromecast or Valve’s now defunct Steam Link, though it’s hard to tell based on the photo alone. It certainly looks a shade smaller than the Xbox controller just to its left. Notably, the Series S was first revealed on Spencer’s shelf as well. A response to Spencer’s tweet by the official Xbox account seems to imply it may be an older prototype.
While previous speculation was that Xbox’s Game Pass streaming device would be a smaller stick-sized dongle, the company told Windows Central in May that it had pivoted to a new “approach” for Keystone. “We have made the decision to pivot away from the current iteration of the Keystone device,” a spokesperson for the company said at the time. “We will take our learnings and refocus our efforts on a new approach that will allow us to deliver Xbox Cloud Gaming to more players around the world in the future.”
It’s still not clear exactly what the company meant by that, and it’s always possible that Spencer’s photo today was 1.) not meant to tease anything or 2.) was teasing something completely different from Keystone. Microsoft has also reportedly been working on a standalone optical drive attachment for the all-digital versions of its Xbox Series X/S. Both seem unlikely.
“It’s probably a mistake on my part,” Spencer said in a Kinda Funny Games appearance in July when describing the easter eggsfans look for on his shelf. He claimed there was no thought behind what appears on it during his video calls and other photos, and that it was simply a collection of gaming industry gifts and signifiers. The hosts were less than convinced.
Update: 10/10/22 2:58 p.m. ET: A spokesperson for Microsoft re-iterated that the device on Spencer’s shelf is an older prototype and that the company’s early statement that it had pivoted “away” from the current iteration.
The spooky season is upon us and a lowkey stacked October for Xbox Game Pass is bringing the rat kings, H. R. Giger body horror, and twee trick-or-treating to celebrate. Whether you just want to go medieval against online strangers inChivalry 2or bask in the striking beauty of A Plague Tale: Requiem’s beautifully grim depiction of war-torn 14th century France, Microsoft’s Netflix-like subscription service has plenty to offer this month.
Here’s everything coming to and leaving Xbox Game Pass in the coming weeks:
October 4
Chivalry 2 (Cloud, Console, and PC)
October 6
Medieval Dynasty (Xbox Series X/S)
The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season (PC)
The Walking Dead: Season Two (PC)
October 11
Costume Quest (Cloud and Console)
Eville (Console and PC)
October 13
Dyson Sphere Program (PC)
October 14
Scorn (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S)
October 18
A Plague Tale: Requiem (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S)
Released last year, Chivalry 2 is a first-person multiplayer fighter where players swing, slash, and claw their way to victory on a medieval battlefield. It’s daunting but a lot of fun once you loosen up and give yourself permission to have fun and be silly. A perfect addition to the low-stakes Game Pass buffet. Scorn, meanwhile, is the debut release from Ebb Software about exploring a mysterious world full of stomach churning and fleshy phenomena. It’s been delayed a bunch and a flashpoint for Kickstarter drama, but hopefully it delivers.
I’ll try not to hold a pillow up in front of my face too much while playing Scorn. Screenshot: Ebb Software
A Plague Tale: Requiem, on the other hand, is Asobo Studio’s follow-up to 2019’s disturbing rat infestation, A Plague Tale: Innocence. Hopefully everyone got a chance to check that out before it fell out of the Game Pass rotation last month. It was a moody adventure game that didn’t overplay its hand, and while Requiem seems slated to build out the game’s action, I hope it stays grounded. And if you have a PC, Dyson Sphere Program is one of 2021’s best spacefaring basebuilders.
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Game Pass is also losing some games in the next few weeks, but fortunately nothing too devastating. The following are all gone as of October 15:
Bloodroots (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Echo Generation (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Into The Pit (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Ring of Pain (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Sable (Cloud, Console, and PC)
The Good Life (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Sable’s art style is one of the most striking in recent memory, and Bloodroots is a decent enough top-down beat ‘em up. I’ll be checking out Ring of Pain, which I’d never heard of before but is a card-based roguelike dungeon crawler. All of my Steam favorite tags are tingling.
Game Pass’ library has ebbed and flowed in recent months, but after a drier spell earlier in the year things are starting to pick up again. Most of 2022’s big blockbuster releases were delayed until 2023, but there’s plenty coming on Microsoft’s subscription service at least to stave off the drought.
Earlier this week, some folks checking Microsoft’s Cloud Gaming beta website noticed something weird: listings for games like Elden Ring and Grand Theft Auto V not only said they were part of the company’s Game Pass offering, but would also be playable on the cloud.
Here’s a screengrab of Elden Ring’s page, taken by @klobrille, clearly showing both the “GAME PASS” badge and the fact that it’s playable on the Cloud Gaming beta:
Listings for Grand Theft Auto V (which has already been on the service and left) and, weirdly, Soul Hackers, all declared they were now on the subscription service. Even weirder is the fact that none of those things had ever been announced, which you’d think would be the case given the prominence of both Elden Ring and GTA V.
There’s a reason for that, of course. Microsoft have since told Eurogamer that the listings were a “bug.” “We’re aware of a bug that incorrectly displayed some titles as available with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate,” a representative says. “We rolled out a fix and this is now updated.”
Normally this kind of administrative, backend stuff wouldn’t be that exciting, but what got people interested here is that GamesCom is less than two weeks away, with Microsoft due to make a significant appearance (and a live presentation). And in June, Microsoft announced that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate users would be able to play “select” titles they own via Cloud Gaming, even if they weren’t part of the Game Pass catalogue.
Put those two things together and it seemed entirely plausible that Microsoft had simply jumped the gun on a couple of GamesCom announcements. Calling these listings a “bug” certainly seems to put a dampener on that enthusiasm, but GamesCom kicks off on August 22, just in case you want to keep an eye on things anyway.
Two months ago, Sony reimagined PS Plus, its longtime membership program for PlayStation owners. Now, it looks a whole lot like Microsoft’s Game Pass: For roughly the same amount of money, both offer access to a Netflix-style games-on-demand library. Obviously, we had to stack the two services up against each other.
Price
Game Pass is available as a subscription for console, PC, or both. The two separated tiers cost $10 a month. Xbox Live Ultimate, which joins the two and provides access to the EA Play Library (a similar games-on-demand service) and Xbox Live Gold, costs $15 a month. There is no way to pay for multiple months or a year up front at a tiered markdown (at least officially).
PS Plus is also available for a subscription, but it gets very complicated very fast. There are two new tiers. The Extra is $15 a month, or $100 for the year, and offers free monthly games, online play, and a catalog of on-demand games including some of Ubisoft’s library. Premium is $18 a month, or $120 a year, and adds access to classic games, game trials, and cloud streaming for most of the games in the library. That’s a huge price difference, and while PS Plus Premium is more expensive month-to-month, it’s actually almost 50 percent cheaper if you commit to the whole year.
Winner: PS Plus
Streaming
Game Pass allows for cloud-streaming, provided you pay for the pricier Ultimate tier. The streaming functionality is technically still “in beta,” but it is for all intents and purposes up and running. Microsoft recommends internet speeds of at least 10mbps for mobile devices and 20mbps for consoles and PCs. Based on Kotaku’s testing, it’s…fine? Despite cloud gaming’s huge advancements recently, streaming still can’t compete with downloaded games. The latency, however minor, is unignorable. As such, cloud gaming is best used for puzzlers, chill RPGs, light platformers, and other games that don’t demand split-second reflexes.
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Microsoft says “more than 100” games are currently streamable via cloud gaming on Xbox Game Pass, but more games are added every few weeks. Right now, the Game Pass library currently lists 381 games as capable of streaming.
Stray.Screenshot: Annapurna / Kotaku
To unlock streaming on PS Plus you need to buy the $18 a month tier. And even then, the streaming quality is nothing to write home about. At best, it’s as good as Xbox Cloud Gaming. Sometimes it’s worse. Roughly 320 games from the Premium library can be streamed on console or PC, and a good chunk of those are PS3 games and classics rather than the full PlayStation 4 library. For example, Marvel’s Avengers and Stray are available on console but not in the streaming library.
Most notably, you can’t stream PS Plus games to your phone. For now, the service relies on Remote Play, meaning you need a console to play on mobile and you must be on the same WiFi network.
Winner: Game Pass
Game Library
Of course, a games-on-demand service is only as good as the one thing it’s supposed to provide: games.
Right now, the Xbox Game Pass library has about 475 games, but that tally comprises the library across both tiers, including the 92 games currently part of EA Play. The main draw, of course, is that Microsoft puts its entire first-party portfolio on the platform. That also includes the major tent poles—like Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5, alongside forthcoming blockbusters like Starfield and Redfall—which become available the day they came out. Third-party games tend to stick around for a year at most, though some, like Rockstar’s open-world Hold ‘Em simulator Red Dead Redemption 2, become unavailable after a matter of months. It’s unpredictable.
Halo Infinite.Screenshot: 343 Industries
The library also regularly cycles in third-party games and often serves as a launch pad for indie gems. This year alone, the twee Zelda-like Tunic, the snowboarding sim Shredders, and the puzzler-cum-dungeon-crawler Loot River all launched on Game Pass. (Here’s Kotaku’s list of the best under-the-radar games currently available.) Developers have acknowledged to Kotaku that debuting on Game Pass cuts into initial sales but is ultimately worth it for the tradeoff in publicity.
PS Plus Extra currently includes around 430 PS4 and PS5 games, while Premium adds another 395 from PS1, PS2, PS3 (streaming only), and PSP. While the classics are a nice bonus, the biggest draw by far are the PlayStation exclusives like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Bloodborne. Unlike Microsoft, Sony has committed to not putting its newest releases on the service day-and-date, and if Returnal arriving a year after release is any indication, it seems like a good bet that players will have to wait at least a year to 18 months before newer stuff appears.
There are plenty of strong contenders in the third-party department though. Games like Final Fantasy VII Remake, Prey, Control, Doom, and Tetris Effect are all present, as are indies like Celeste, Outer Wilds, Dead Cells, and Virginia. The library has plenty of diversity and was bolstered most recently from the same-day addition of Stray, which is already a 2022 GOTY contender. The Ubisoft component, led by Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is also a strong compliment. At the same time, Sony hasn’t yet demonstrated it is, or will be, as aggressive as Microsoft in courting a steady stream of third party day-and-date additions. There’s also no PC-exclusive portion of the library.
Winner: PS Plus
Ari: Going into this exercise, I totally imagined it’d paint a clear picture of Game Pass superiority, but these two services seem fundamentally identical to me—right down to the UI—with Sony’s new version of PS Plus marginally better in the few aspects that matter. The prices are mostly the same, but the option to pay for a year of PS Plus at a “discount” edges out Game Pass in that regard. Sure, Game Pass’ big draw is that it puts Microsoft’s first-party games on the service at launch, but…Microsoft barely has any first-party games out this year! Right now, that perk seems like little more than a marketing line.
Ethan: I also thought Game Pass would be the clear winner coming out of this, but now I’m conflicted as well. Not everyone can afford to pay for a full year up front, but it really changes the calculus in this matchup. There are some other key differences as well, and while I don’t think they make one a clear winner over the other, I do think it makes it easier to decide which you want to pay for. Want immediate access to a meaty back catalog of some of the biggest and best games from the last generation? PS Plus wins. Want to stay current on some of the best new games coming out every month and play them at any time on your phone? Then it’s Game Pass all the way.
Xbox Game Pass has had a rocky few months, seeing it lose major games and failing to add marquee additions to plug the gaps. But on the heels of Xbox’s big marketing blitz—including a promise that 50 games will hit Xbox over the next year, many on Game Pass—the popular games-on-demand service is picking up steam.
Here’s everything coming to Game Pass through the rest of the month, plus two games that were quietly added over the long weekend.
The (Microsoft Edge)lords giveth, and they taketh away, so the following games will be unavailable as of June 30:
FIFA 20, via EA Play (Console, PC)
Jurassic World Evolution (Console Cloud)
Last Stop (Cloud, Console, and PC)
MotoGP 20 (Cloud, Console, PC)
All told, it’s a solid crop. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is easily the beat-’em-up of the year, a lovely homage to genre classics that folds in modernized sensibilities. Omori, an acclaimed turn-based RPG with status effects based on emotions, has been out on PC for a few years, and makes its way to console via Game Pass. (It’s also out on Switch.) Both are already live, and worth checking out.
My bosses have forced me via blood oath to check out Shadowrun, so while I can’t personally recommend it, I have been told to pass the word on: It’s good.
The games on the horizon are nothing to write off, either. Far Cry 5 might be the worst modern Far Cry, but the gap between “good” and “bad” Far Cry isn’t very wide. Naraka: Bladepoint is a moderately popular parkour-based battle royale; it’ll presumably see its audience expand with the leap to console (just watch out for the bots). It’s unclear yet whether or not a lineup like this is enough to stem reported subscription churn—or to head off competition from Sony’s now-competing PS Plus service—but it’s a solid start.
Typically, when Game Pass starts trending, it’s either because it scored a killer game or some influencers concocted a viral “joke” that ultimately does nothing other than hand a $2 trillion corporation two days of free marketing. Over the past few days, however, Microsoft’s games-on-demand program started trending for another reason: Players say they’re unsubscribing. For now.
The burnout largely comes down to subscribers saying that Game Pass isn’t delivering on its value proposition. For a monthly fee, Game Pass grants you access to a Netflix-style library of games that you can download to your Xbox or PC (or, in some cases, stream to a compatible device). But the big selling point is this: Every first-party Microsoft game hits the library at launch, meaning subscribers get access at no extra cost to Microsoft’s prestigious first-party releases, like Halo Infinite or Forza Horizon 5.
Earlier this month, Bethesda—officially now one of Xbox’s first-party studios, following an industry-shaking acquisition in 2021—delayed its two biggest forthcoming games: space-RPG Starfield and vampire shooter Redfall (developed by Bethesda subsidiary Arkane). Both were expected to launch day-one on Game Pass this year. Now, they won’t come out until the first half of 2023, leaving Microsoft’s first-party portfolio looking much drier than it did a month ago.
All right, time for some reductive math! Let’s say that you’ve signed up for the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate tier, which costs $15 a month and includes standard access to the game library plus a number of other perks. Let’s also assume any big-budget games, exclusive or not, that hit the service cost an industry-standard $60. By that math, you’d need to play two full-price games via Game Pass every four months to justify the cost.
That tape on a Starfield helmet is temporary.Screenshot: Bethesda
“The service is great but there aren’t any AAA exclusives to compel me to stay,” Tom’s Guide writer Tony Polanco said in a tweet. “I’ll be back when the titles start dropping.” Washington Post reporter Gene Park shared a similar sentiment, pointing out that, over the past few months, the only game from the service he’s availed himself of is Trek to Yomi, a side-scrolling samurai action game. (Trek to Yomi costs $20. Also side note: It rules.) Other prominent members of the gaming cognoscenti lamented paying up front for months if not years of Game Pass, while others compared it unfavorably against the upcoming revamp of PS Plus, Sony’s competing subscription service. (Sony’s generally vaunted first-party games won’t launch on PS Plus.)
On the flip side, there’s no shortage of people calling this whole thing a “clout war” or saying that “no one cares.”
It’s unclear whether the extended convo has had a tangible impact on Game Pass subscription numbers. Microsoft does not make such figures public, and representatives for the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A dip in interest was, to a certain extent, inevitable. For the past few years, Xbox has coasted on a tidal wave of goodwill generated by Game Pass, which has continually made some of the biggest AAA games—not just exclusives but also multiplatform hits like Guardians of the Galaxy—available on its service. Those come alongside a regular flow of smaller titles that benefit from the marketing boost of appearing on Game Pass. Part of the joy of subscribing is that you never know what you’re gonna get; you might try out an under-the-radar indie and bounce off it in minutes, or it could quickly become one of your favorites of the year. (Everyone, say hi to Tunic.)
Read More:The 24 Best Games On Xbox Game Pass
This mix of big and small, old and new, caused Game Pass subscriptions to ramp up significantly in 2020. They ticked up last year too (albeit at a slower rate than 2020), amid an absolutely banger series of lineups in the fall and winter. There’s no way Microsoft could’ve maintained that cadence forever; nearly six months into 2022, though it’s added the occasional gem, Game Pass has yet to feature an “OMG take my money!!!” lineup of forthcoming games.
That said, the service will almost assuredly improve again. Next month, Xbox will host its not-E3 press conference. During its 2021 conference, Xbox announced more than 20 games planned for Game Pass. Some of those have already come out. But plenty—from the Limbo-like Somerville to the Fallout-like Atomic Heart to the Outer Worlds-like Outer Worlds 2—have yet to receive release dates.
