Do you have Microsoft’s Games with Gold which is a fancy title for Xbox Live Gold subscription? Then you will get the following games for free for a very limited time so act while you can for the month of December:
Launched in June 2017, Xbox One Game Pass is a digital subscription service that allows users access to a catalog of games for a single monthly fee. It’s an interesting enough service, with a decent selection of games and the ability to play them across both Xbox One and Windows 10.
But it seems Microsoft’s plans for the service don’t end there. No, they don’t just want the service available on Xbox One and Windows, but also across all consoles.
And that’s literal too. According to Phil Spencer, the company may seek to bring the service to PlayStation and Nintendo systems too. Here’s his comments about the whole idea in whole:
When you think about reaching a customer with this content where their only compute device could be an Android phone, you think about,‘What are all the ways that person pays for content today’?” Spencer said. “So we need to make sure that we’re world-class at free-to-play content, but we also look at subscription as a much lower barrier way for a customer to build a library of content.
So we built Xbox Game Pass — it started on console, it will come to PC, and eventually it will come to every device — we use the flywheel that we have with customers on an Xbox to start the growth in Xbox Game Pass. But as somebody sitting back and taking a longer-term view of where our business is going, you should look at that as a business model that we think scales to billions of people not hundreds of millions of people like retail does. ”However, the most interesting implication is that Microsoft might seek to bring its Game Pass service to PlayStation and Nintendo devices. Spencer’s comments weren’t limited to “console, then PC, then mobile” — he instead said “every device.
As you can see, it’s not exactly a confirmation, more of a ‘nice to have’ idea for the future.
Yet it’s still interesting none the less. I mean, can youimagine playing Xbox games on a Switch? That’s something you’d never expected to see happen, yet it may well become a reality in the next decade or so if Microsoft plays their cards right.
And that’s not the only interesting side effect either. No, you know what other company releases their games via Games Pass?
Rare
Yep, Nintendo’s old second party buddy uses the service too, with their latest title (Sea of Thieves) being a heavily promoted game for said service.
This means that if Game Pass does in fact become availablein the Nintendo Switch, we could in future end up seeing the next Banjo-Kazooie title end up on the Switch or its successor too. Same with any potential Conker’sBad Fur Day sequel, a new Perfect Dark game or hell, even the company’s entire library.
It’s not just their new games either. No, Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie are available on the service right now.
So if it did come to a Nintendo system, we could in essence get the Banjo-Kazooie series on ‘Virtual Console’ by way of Microsoft. Pretty neat given all the classics lost in the buyout, and a real nostalgia trip for anyone who grew up in the N64 era too.
For now though, all we can do is wait and see. Maybe it’ll come to Switch and PS4, maybe it won’t. only time can tell.
However, what do you think? Could you see Game Pass on a Nintendo system?
If so, what great Xbox One or PC games would you want to play there and why?
Tell us your thoughts in a comment or over on social media today!
Source:
Phil Spencer: Game Pass will come to every device (Games Industry.biz)
Do you have Microsoft’s Games with Gold which is a fancy title for Xbox Live Gold subscription? Then you will get the following games for free for a very limited time so act while you can for the month of October:
Do you have Microsoft’s Games with Gold which is a fancy title for Xbox Live Gold subscription? Then you will get the following games for free for a very limited time so act while you can for the month of September:
Over the course of its development, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night has seen its release date change quite a bit. Originally planned for a 2017 release, the game ended up being pushed back to 2018 for various reasons back in 2016, with quality control issues being cited as the reason for the delay.
And now it seems history’s repeating itself. Why? Because just earlier today, the team behind the game announced that Bloodstained was pushed back a second time, with the game’s release date now being sometime in 2019 rather than later this year.
Here’s the quote about it from their update post on Kickstarter:
Our first announcement is that the game will now launch in 2019. The most important reason for this is to raise the quality level, especially after all the very valuable feedback from the Beta Backer Demo.
Again, it’s for quality control reasons, with the developers saying the delay is needed to ‘raise the quality level’ in response to backer feedback.
It’s a disappointing thing to hear (especially after the same thing happened before), but it’s a completely understandable decision none the less.
Remember, even despite patches and updates, the Miyamoto quote about a ‘bad game staying bad forever’ still holds true for the most part.
And that’s because even when a game gets better, it doesn’t get another shot at a first impression. Remember Pokémon GO?
Yeah, it did well at first, but it’s poor quality in its early days and the constant bugs and issues with the game basically destroyed much of its reputation, and led to a large percentage of the userbase giving up on the game.
Same goes for Yooka-Laylee and No Man’s Sky. Sure they got better as updates got pushed out and bugs got fixed, but the damage has already been done. Their reputation is in tatters and the fanbase has mostly moved on.
Hence for the team behind Bloodstained, it makes sense to try and get things right the first time around. First impressions matter, and as a Kickstarter success story, they don’t want a repeat of Mighty No 9 or Yooka-Laylee’s situation here either.
Additionally, they’ve also announced the PlayStation Vita version of the game is cancelled.
Again, as per their Kickstarter update:
The game will no longer launch on PlayStation Vita. This decision is largely due to Sony’s plans to discontinue the Vita console, ending production of physical copies and stopping certain online store support features.
Again, it’s a perfectly reasonable decision from the game’s team. The PS Vita was running on fumes for a while now, and support for the console had basically died out altogether outside of Japan by the time they promised a release there. And so (like with the various Wii U and Ouya ports for other Kickstarter projects of recent years), the game’s been cancelled for a platform where its commercial viability was basically nil.
So yeah, there you have it. Bloodstained has been pushed back to 2019, and the Vita release won’t be happening.
But what are your thoughts on all this? Are you disappointed in the delay, or hopeful it’ll make for a better game overall? And were you one of the few people who wanted to play the game on the Vita?
Tell us your thoughts on the matter here at Gaming Reinvented or over on social media today!