All of the games on gamepass are available for purchase at reasonable prices. Gamepass is a choice for people that want a wide variety of games to play right now for a reasonable price. Maybe one day sony or Microsoft first party games could become sub only but that seems very unlikely given the relatively high selling price of games compared to Blu rays, cds, books, etc… . It’s too profitable not to offer them for sale.

This is a very silly argument.

I blame Call of Duty & Gears of War & Halo. As soon as people accepted a fee for multiplayer, it was over. I remember thinking “PS3 is gonna win this; who’s gonna pay for Xbox live, no way,” and then people did it.

Admittedly, I like Game Pass lol. It’s awesome for trying out games: I got it to try Psychonauts 2, then bought it, also tried High on Life & decided to skip it.

Considering how few actual gamers seem to have become game devs, it’s only a matter of time before you’re right about not being able to buy games. Just like car seats not heating if you don’t subscribe.

I see it as a library. I pay a fee, I read as many books as I want, I give them back when I am done, I can get them again if I want to.

What I see as a problem is preservation of games. One day they stop providing a download and then these games are gone for good. Books get preserved by the government(s), games rarely.

I also get free (not F2P) games a week on PC, more than I will ever be able to play in my life and good games too. There is no chance my PC will ever be an empty paperweight, especially not because of backwards compatibility and because legally DRM free games (GOG for example, itch.io etc.) exist that you can even download and store yourself so if your internet is down you can still install them.

Subscription services will start to become a problem once one business has a monopoly and Microsoft is on their way there maybe. But I guess it will work how it is with Netflix. First Netflix was good, then everyone wanted to make their own version of Netflix and now people decide more and more to set sail again, because one subscription might be ok, three or more are not anymore. Game Pass, Nintendo, Ubisoft+, EA, …

Game Pass is super cheap in my country (RM 15/month ≈ 3.2 USD) and it allows me to play Starfield and Persona 5 Royal without having to pay the full price.

The combined price of both games is RM 491 which is equivalent to 2.7 years of Game Pass. I haven’t even counted other games I play like Atomic Heart and Forza Horizon 5 so it’s a great deal.