Since Redmond they have always done the same thing, trying to crack a market by putting the competition in a situation where their products would not be profitable to keep the monopoly after exhausting the rival. Together with Xbox they tried to end PlayStation and Nintendo for over twenty years without success. Its latest strategy is Game Pass, with which Microsoft has reversed its already known harmful practices.
The rise of Game Pass-style subscription services
However, we don’t want to tell you about Denuvo’s problems, but about those that the total loss of unlimited use licenses in games entails. The fact that we buy the games in digital format meant the loss of the real rights, real and not real, on them, since these platforms prevent the sale. However, we enjoyed unlimited games and without having to pay any fees.
At first glance, Game Pass is great, because we’re talking about a large collection of games for little money per month, which appeals to everyone. Well, remember those bootleg MP3 song compilations back in the day? Have you heard them all? What about your list of purchased games on Steam? We are sure that a good part of them you haven’t even tried. Will you play all Game Pass games? Well, you’re not going to see all of Netflix’s options either, because there’s no time for everything.
Game Pass, Microsoft’s Trojan Horse
The way of acting of those of Redmond is always the same, bust a deal for costs and then keep it for them. A very clear example was when they started giving away Microsoft Office or rather selling it for the low value of a dollar. The result? Office suites like WordPerfect and Lotus have been discontinued.
Microsoft’s idea with Game Pass is simple, make games feel like they don’t cost what they should be worth, but are too expensive to sink other platforms and enslave the publishers to their service. The problem is that on the PC this will eventually happen somehow. Since Microsoft has a monopoly on development tools with Visual Studio and DirectX mainly.
An alternative has not been developed in all this time and despite the fact that there is no coercion on their part towards the developers, the Game Pass has been adopted by the developers. The reason? The huge piracy on PC and the fact that the platform is subsidized by hardware manufacturers. Pirates obviously want to play cheap and they’re the ones on PC embracing Game Pass, which is much better than piracy for publishers, but that could be the end of full price gaming.
The price of games and the actual situation
Many focus on the notion of profitability of the Game Pass and thus end up losing the trees in the middle of the forest. The issue is not profitability and focusing on that is a mistake. The problem is long before Game Pass arrived, where we found that games didn’t increase in price with inflation, but instead kept the same number on the label. The result? In fact, we paid less and less, which led to the creation of alternative business models to capitalize on in the mid-game.
In other words, the games should really cost more, given the level of their production and promotion costs. And no, we’re not advocating a price hike, that’s what it is. How do you explain the appearance of something like the Game Pass in this situation? Plain and simple due to the fact that the goal is to put an end to piracy, however, for this to work, there must be a number of people willing to pay full price for something that is almost given away to others.
Let’s not forget that you can fool a few all the time, a lot for a short time, but not all the time. Honestly, having a collection of unused games in the Steam library is better than not relying on Game Pass. What with little effort is given with idem is removed. Are you going to give a third party the power to decide which games you want to play?
