My son disagrees with my decision to leave after that price hike. But, I set aside the annual amount in an “envelope” for him to buy games outright on steam etc vs renting them on Gamepass
YES. This will actually show him the value of saving for owning something vs a subscription that is never guaranteed to not increase in price (in fact its almost guaranteed it will go up in price).
This is a really good move.
Except you’re not really owning anything on Steam. Their policy might change, the CEO might go… Granted it probably won’t happen anytime soon but you’re not really owning anything on Steam too.
There are people who buy hundreds of games on Steam who don’t really play 90+% of their library, and people qho subscribe to Game Pass who “rent” and are able to play the latest games. Neither of them are wrong.
The one upside with steam is that you can access the files. If the company was going down or changing policy you can take the latest installers/game files and back them up.
There are a few games I’ve bought on steam and installed on my retro console because of this setup.
I can still access the files and easily play the games offline in that scenario though AND not have to pay for playing over my own internet connection.
I always check GOG first for this reason but many games are not on there so I have to use steam but difference is on PS or Xbox once they stop supporting something or ban me I’m SOL unless I wait for a jailbreak which on the newest ones could be 10+ years away
On steam I just simply crack the steam DRM in 2 easy steps and boom. You own it.
But you are correct that on steam you only get a license.
Maybe consider introducing him to GoG as well, I love Steam and buy most of my games through them, but you are just buying a license which they can revoke or delist games. At least with GoG you own the game. Granted this depends what your son likes playing…
Good. Then reduce the price and remove the useless parts of it.
Interestingly, Apple made their One subscription pick&mix (you can choose to e.g. only have the iCloud expansion + Arcade in it, reducing the monthly cost), and it drove subscriber numbers up.
Microsoft could do the same. Offer the service at a fair price, allow users to choose what parts of a conjoined service stack they want, and you’ll have users.
Force them to go all-or-nothing (which was what the restructuring of Game Pass led to), and jack up the prices 3-4x, and watch them go away by the millions.
Fuckin duh
To be fair, Gamepass had 34 million subscribers before the price hike, so as long as they drove away less than 11 million, Microsoft still comes out on top after their 50% hike while having to provide services to fewer accounts.
Yeah, but from a business perspective the whole reason they raised the price was to make more money, not the same amount they made before. Their projected profits were probably based on current users so breaking even or not reaching those projected profits would be considered a huge failure.
They’d have taken a certain level of loss into consideration when they made the change.
They definitely wouldn’t want to break even on profits though.
Are they really that naive and stupid?
Have you seen the state of Windows?
The fact that I need a game pass to play LAN games is what drove me away.
