What Is Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, And Is It Worth It?

Microsoft is combining its Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass service into one bundle called Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, but is it worth it?

[Jin_Sakai]

What Is Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, And Is It Worth It?

It’s not that great of a deal when stacked up against the competition.

Xbox Live and Gamepass....$180 a year
PS Plus and PS Now............$160 a year

[PhoenixUp]

And you don’t even need PS+ to play online multiplayer games on PS Now, which just further shows how superfluous XBGPU is because of Microsoft’s business tactics

[Jin_Sakai]

You also don’t need PS Plus to play F2P games which is how it should be.

[bluebenjamin]

We shouldn’t be paying to play our 60$ games online PC gamers dont have to pay to play the same games online! wth is really going on

[Fishy Fingers]

Cheers for clearing that up Jin. If any xbox owning friends ask I'll recommend PS+ and PSNow.... :/

[Rude-ro]

@bluebenjamin
Give it time. They are working towards it.

[Imortus_san]

You don't need Xbox Live to play Gamepass games unless you go online, it's an option.
You don't need PS Plus to use PS Now.

Gamepass has new released games every month, and a lot of recent games, while PS Now looks like a retro service with a ton of games that no longer support online gameplay, and no new released games.

In the end Gamepass squashes PS Now in the game department.

[Rude-ro]

Neither squash anyone.
It’s a ripoff.

[DarXyde]

I think it's silly that it doesn't save money for annual subs.

[spicelicka]

Lol not when you consider the games on the Gamepass:

Shadow of the Tomb raider
Forza Horizon 4
Just Cause 4
Monster Hunter
Hellblade
Prey
Sea of Thieves

These are just the some of the recent ones, and the biggest selling point is every MS published game is on there at launch, FH4, Crackdown, Gears of war 5. Talk to me when you can play God of war, Spiderman, or Days Gone on PS Now. Whether you're a fanboy or not, objectively speaking Gamepass has a much better offering you can't deny it. Bring on the silent fanboy downvotes.

[Imortus_san]

Nope, not worth it, game pass is fantastic but no gamer likes every game that cames out every month on Game Pass so it better to pay only the months that are worthy, besides the Games stay for a long time so, you can pay a month every 3 months and still play everything.

[optimus]

why do people keep comparing this to a yearly subscription?🙄.... it's worth it if you pay monthly, it's not if you pay yearly. why is that so hard for people to understand?? it's so simple to break down....

gamepass - $10 a month
gold- $10 a month
Ultimate - $15 a month = you save $5...

paying for 2 months straight saves you more...

gamepass for 2 months - $20
gold for 2 months - $20
Ultimate for 2 months - $30 = you save $10

enough with the yearly subscription comparison cause as of right now, they don't even offer ultimate as a yearly subscription.🙄...and for the record this is simply a straight up retail bargain. obviously, you can get gamepass for a lot less throughout the year with sales and such at which point you would be stupid to get the ultimate combo at retail price.

[PhoenixUp]

Because if you want to have the service for a year that’s how much you’d have to pay for it

[optimus]

well the reason they don't offer a year's subscription is because hardly anyone would actually pay for it for a year. not every game on there appeals to everyone so why would you pay a year to play 3 or 4 games you might like? i would think it certainly wouldn't take you a year to finish 3-4 games 🙄

that's the point...
this is for people that buy a month or 2 at a time because they just added a game they may like so they buy it for $10 bucks and if they wanted to play said game online it would only cost them $5 more instead of another $10. THAT'S who the target audience for this is and NOT people that are looking to pay a year for it. it's not rocket science people!🙄

[PhoenixUp]

What kind of asasnine reasoning is that? Netflix doesn’t have a annual plan, you going to tell me NOBODY ever subscribed to it for an entire year?

Fact is there are consumers that subscribe to Game Pass & other all access subscription services for a year even when there’s no year option available. It’s pretty ridiculous to just say those people don’t exist and try to brush off how much it would cost to stay subscribed for a year.

How you decide how to pay for the service doesn’t apply to everyone.

[optimus]

you can't really apply the same principle as having a netflix subscription because unlike gamepass, netflix has new content on a weekly basis and that may warrant paying for it every month for a year. not to mention that they create shows exclusively for it whereas there are yet any games created exclusively for gamepass.

aside from that, netflix has been around for over 10 years now and has been gaining ground and built it's current reputation on high quality programming, whereas gamepass has been out for barely 2 years and people are still bitching about it having nothing but old games and very few good current ones....furthermore, show me where i said "nobody" subscribes for a year and I'll show you where i said "hardly anyone" which is different than "nobody"....

gamepass has over 200 games, i don't know anyone that has or is willing to play and finish 200 games in a year....

Microsoft has done the research, if they're numbers showed more people subscribing for 12 months straight and less people subscribing sporadically throughout the year then they would have come out with a seperate yearly subscription like gold by now...it's a numbers game that you don't seem to grasp.

[PhoenixUp]

You’re really stretching here just to defend Game Pass not having an annual model.

Game Pass still receives new games every month. In addition to that videogames as a medium take a lot more investment than movies and television. Consumers have just as much reason to keep subscribing all year round with Game Pass as they would with any other on demand service.

Terminologically speaking, “hardly anybody” and “nobody” are interchangeable. If you’re saying you weren’t using the terms interchangeably which would mean that logically you actually do believe that there are people who would subscribe to Game Pass for an entire year, then what on earth are you arguing about?

Just because you don’t know people with that habit doesn’t mean that audience doesn’t exist. I’m sure you don’t know many people who demonstrate a variety of market trends that have been proven to exist. Just as many people could justify staying subscribed to a service that continually gets more content as consumers who would come and go.

You know how many various services don’t have annual price models just to get the most revenue from consumers by restricting them to only monthly price models? This isn’t anything new. Netflix as the biggest prime example as the most successful on demand service clearly sees data of consumers remaining subscribed all year round yet they don’t offer a year subscription because they know they’d make more money by only offering monthly plans. Microsoft most likely has the same mindset.

[knickstr]

For the games you get for the price? Definitely. The long term consequences of games shifting to games as a service to keep the model profitable. Not worth it.

[AK91]

No it’s not worth it