starry sky. red drop. Crouching Dragon: Fallen Dynasty. My world legend. Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Gold, Monster Hunter Rise, P’s Lie, Regular, Hollow Knight: Silk Song, Atomic Heart , “Warhammer 40K: Dark Tide”, “Ark 2”, “Flintlock”, “Guilty Gear Strive”, “Walheim”, “GoldenEye 007”. There are many, many more.
Are you going to buy any games in 2023?or you just have to start Xbox Game Pass Every time you log into your console and browse the tabs a little? Because I know how trivial it is to buy brand new $70 games multiple times a year in the midst of a cost of living crisis.
To that end, Xbox Game Pass feels like an absolutely vital part of my gaming setup. In addition to the titles listed above, we’ll undoubtedly have more titles coming in the future – we all know Xbox likes to sneak things on the service – and with a meager asking price of £10.99 a month for the highest tier… what’s not to like of? It also lets me play games on my phone, console, or PC without migrating save data (and I have more options on PC too!).
iGamesNews Editor-in-Chief Tom Orry already outlined how amazing the service would be if you were a kid, but I also wanted to throw my hat into the ring and say how ridiculous it was that you could get an Xbox Series X console with 24 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate from £20.99.
That’s ridiculous; as a teenager I had to sell my PS2 and all my humble JRPGs – and a month’s salary of my kitchen porter – just to buy a Halo 3 Xbox 360. If I had the option to do so, I could spend a day or two of my salary on a subscription and get access to the shiniest new consoles and 300+ games a day. Really, that’s out of this world.
But I digress, I’m talking about 2023 on Game Pass. I know I’m going to put a lot of time into Starfield (and everyone on this site will, we need to bring you content™), and I’m going to dedicate my life to sniffing out all of Silksong’s secrets and getting just as good in the game Among the speedrunners are the first Hollow Knights. Elsewhere, games like Lies of P (aka: we have Bloodborne at home), Atomic Heart, and Routine would give me value – because they’re the kind of stuff I’d be interested in but probably not risk buying outside of game services.
Then there’s Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden – each of which looks absolutely stunning in HD. The third is the best (fight me), now the whole world will experience the darkest Persona without having to squint for a Vita or PSP (rest in peace).
Adding Crouching Dragon: Fallen Dynasty – a unique, brutal and absolutely stunning evolution of the Nioh formula – even the first few months of the year are stacked. Not to mention summer. Not to mention any other plans for Xbox.
Meanwhile, on the water, there’s Sony. The PlayStation’s first-party output is unparalleled (just look at the impact of God of War: Ragnarok), and Sony seems to be doubling down on this prestigious game idea in the future. But the PS Plus reboot failed to live up to expectations, and you’d be hard-pressed to find gamers talking about PS Plus with the same reverence they talk about Game Pass.
That’s because it doesn’t offer the same value as Game Pass; if you subscribe to the upper tier of the new PS Plus — the premium tier — you’re likely doing so because you want access to PlayStation Classics. But consider this: Sony has only added one PS1 game to PS Plus Premium in six months. Is it worth the premium subscription? Probably not, at least not from where I am now.
Right now, PlayStation vs. Xbox is a bit like comparing apples and oranges; they’re both doing different things. But given that they both offer subscription services that give you a library of games to play at your leisure, it’s hard not to compare and contrast. In 2022, Xbox wins trophies for value, choice, marketing, and execution. It looks like Sony will be further behind in 2023.