Mike and Alex return to the concept of “the Game Pass Effect”. Games, the argument goes, designed for consumption on a subscription service alongside dozens of others a month will need to be conformed to this mode of consumption. They will lack the grandiose worldbuilding, demanding mechanics and novel-style writing of the best the medium has to offer. They will, instead, be shallow, light-hearted, toy-like experiences designed for piecemeal engagement, likely with loot-based progression. This (evidently) detracts from the quality of a game.
A year packed with major releases for Xbox consoles, PC and Game Pass.
ninja Gaiden being released 8 days apart is insane MS hasn't learned anything with shoulder to shoulder releases. October 29 for Outer Worlds and October 21 for Ninja Gaiden. These games now range from 60 to 80$. Yalls audience might GP it but other platforms have to buy it and your average person won't shell out that kinda money a week apart.
Well, you dont have to buy it. Noone is making gamers buy it a week apart. I don't see anything wrong with it.
You're talking about a first-person RPG and a third-person action game though. So, it's a bit different than EA putting Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1 back-to-back.
I count 7 original multiplatform IPs, which were ultimately bought and are now published by Microsoft.
Sigh.
Yeah.
I must have skipped those years being frozen in Area 51 in which 75 billion dollar acquisitions of around 25 original multiplatform IPs were already normal.
Xbox, PlayStation, Take2, Ubisoft, EA are mostly made up of purchased studios and games.
Nintendo are the only ones not doing tons of acquisitions.
The Epic Games Store wants you to help folks get healthy with this weeks free game.
Famitsu has published its estimated physical game software data for Japan for week of June 2, 2025 to June 8, 2025.
Hardware Sales (followed by lifetime sales)
Switch 2 – 947,931 (New)
PlayStation 5 – 14,535 (5,690,661)
Switch OLED Model – 8,040 (9,060,680)
Switch Lite – 6,089 (6,581,795)
PlayStation 5 Pro – 4,230 (218,056)
Switch – 2,482 (20,109,545)
PlayStation 5 Digital Edition – 2,017 (974,094)
Xbox Series S – 163 (337,686)
Xbox Series X – 113 (320,660)
Xbox Series X Digital Edition – 57 (20,820)
PlayStation 4 – 24 (7,929,628)
So its official. Switch 2 dethroned PS2 in Japan for the biggest hardware launch ever.
Tripled the switch launch numbers, yeah Nintendo's domination of the Japanese market is going smooth
And take note. This is just for retail sales only; sales from the Nintendo Japanese website are not yet included.
And why are we only seeing this type of article now, when this has been obvious for years?
Is it suddenly OK to kick MS now that they are on the floor?
'The Gamepass Effect' is 'The Netflix Effect' with a different name.
First they lure you in with lots of content and a cheap price, then they cheapen the content and raise the price. Some people leave, but many forget to cancel the auto-renew subscription and haven't checked in to notice it's mostly crap, old and/or filler now. It's a classic bait and switch and it relies on known human behaviours.
Sea of Thieves, Halo Infinite, Redfall - this is just how it is at MS now. They've chosen their path.
"They will, instead, be shallow, light-hearted, toy-like experiences designed for piecemeal engagement, likely with loot-based progression. This (evidently) detracts from the quality of a game."
No, they are incomplete, broken, low effort, designed to be heavily monetized, oddly with the microtransactions and storefront working flawlessly day 1 yet the games need a "roadmap" to get them to a state they should have been in at launch. But game pass (evidently) makes that ok even though outside of game pass they are still charging $70 for it.
In much the same way that low budget bad films were 'straight to video', we now have the concept of 'straight to streaming' in which we can see the same formulaic rubbish films appearing on Netflix, AppleTV etc.
Following from that, we know have 'Gamepass Day One!', which was considered a highlight of being a subscriber until it's become apparent that day one games are typically lightweight rubbish shovelware.
'Straight to Gamepass', 'Good enough for Gamepass', and now 'The Gamepass effect' describing this current mediocrity.
This isn't the "Gamepass effect". This is MS both not fully implementing while shortchanging it. "Rushing it market, fixing it later" like they've always done. Only rather than a "one time thing" like with a Windows release, its multiple thing like Halo Infinite, Sea of Thieves or this game.