I don’t have a subscription to it either. Their games aren’t exclusive to Game Pass, and you can still buy them a la carte. In fact, my point with Palworld is that many more people still opt to even though the intuitive answer is that it’s cheaper to rent the game for one month than it is to buy it outright, but I think people have a pretty firm grasp at the value you’re giving up to not own it outright. It was a long con to get people to buy games from the Windows Store too, and people rejected it. They can’t squeeze blood from a stone if the market doesn’t want something. The online subscription service that is doing the nasty stuff that you’re afraid of is Nintendo’s; there are games there only available via subscription. Not to say you’re wrong for where you draw the line in the sand on what you will or will not buy, but nothing indicates we’re anywhere close to that doomsday scenario.
“Doomsday Scenario” might be a bit much as a descriptor. XD
And yes, be it Nintendo, Sony, EGS or whatever, it’s the same deal. The biggest difference is simply that MS is so big that it not even close to a risk for them. As long as Xbox’s income evens out to zero and they aren’t actively losing money, it’s “a win” and they can easily make up for it and add to it until it starts making money. But it already does, so…
A juggernaut that size is hard to contend with and usually gets it’s way.
It will be interesting to see how many of InXile, Obsidian, Bethesda and ActivisionBlizzards future games will be Windows Store and Xbox exclusives. (timed or otherwise.) They are the new bargaining chips after all.
I don’t have a subscription to it either. Their games aren’t exclusive to Game Pass, and you can still buy them a la carte. In fact, my point with Palworld is that many more people still opt to even though the intuitive answer is that it’s cheaper to rent the game for one month than it is to buy it outright, but I think people have a pretty firm grasp at the value you’re giving up to not own it outright. It was a long con to get people to buy games from the Windows Store too, and people rejected it. They can’t squeeze blood from a stone if the market doesn’t want something. The online subscription service that is doing the nasty stuff that you’re afraid of is Nintendo’s; there are games there only available via subscription. Not to say you’re wrong for where you draw the line in the sand on what you will or will not buy, but nothing indicates we’re anywhere close to that doomsday scenario.
“Doomsday Scenario” might be a bit much as a descriptor. XD
And yes, be it Nintendo, Sony, EGS or whatever, it’s the same deal. The biggest difference is simply that MS is so big that it not even close to a risk for them. As long as Xbox’s income evens out to zero and they aren’t actively losing money, it’s “a win” and they can easily make up for it and add to it until it starts making money. But it already does, so…
A juggernaut that size is hard to contend with and usually gets it’s way.
It will be interesting to see how many of InXile, Obsidian, Bethesda and ActivisionBlizzards future games will be Windows Store and Xbox exclusives. (timed or otherwise.) They are the new bargaining chips after all.
The second one of them becomes exclusive, they lose me as a customer too. But I think history shows that they tried that already.