Game Pass for Xbox and PC

At that price point I will definitely play the Hitman trilogy, even if the game hasn't really changed much over the last 20 years.

In very broad terms, maybe. The actual gameplay has improved by about a million times over if you compare Hitman: Codename 47 to Hitman 3 though.

Cool that it's on GamePass now, but IO's biggest problem still is that they insist on jamming always-online GaaS faggotry into their single player game with zero benefit to anyone. Sadly for me, I already have Hitman 3 on PS5 with all the Hitman 1 & 2 missions imported and way too much stuff unlocked to start over on Series X.

After seeing what the Hitman "Trilogy" actually is, I'm even more glad I already own it all on PS5. Not only is the Hitman Trilogy $100 for people without Game Pass, but it doesn't actually include the whole trilogy. There's no GOTY/season pass maps, and if you want them it's an additional $10 for H1 and $35 for H2. Pretty pathetic when the frequent sale price on Hitman 1 GOTY is about $12 and Hitman 2 Gold is $15-20. Combine that with the sale price of Hitman 3 which was $24 just a few days ago and they're trying to charge $145 for what someone who bought everything during xmas sales only paid $56. Even if you have Game Pass it's a shitty deal at $45 for the extra content, because eventually the game will leave the service (sometimes you get to keep the base game if you buy major DLC, but it's a crap shoot at best).

No idea what's going on at that company. They have really talented people making great games, but the ones running the bean counter side of the business are some of the biggest asshats in the industry.

It's getting badly review bombed on Steam too

Vorph said:

After seeing what the Hitman "Trilogy" actually is, I'm even more glad I already own it all on PS5. Not only is the Hitman Trilogy $100 for people without Game Pass, but it doesn't actually include the whole trilogy. There's no GOTY/season pass maps, and if you want them it's an additional $10 for H1 and $35 for H2. Pretty pathetic when the frequent sale price on Hitman 1 GOTY is about $12 and Hitman 2 Gold is $15-20. Combine that with the sale price of Hitman 3 which was $24 just a few days ago and they're trying to charge $145 for what someone who bought everything during xmas sales only paid $56. Even if you have Game Pass it's a shitty deal at $45 for the extra content, because eventually the game will leave the service (sometimes you get to keep the base game if you buy major DLC, but it's a crap shoot at best).

No idea what's going on at that company. They have really talented people making great games, but the ones running the bean counter side of the business are some of the biggest asshats in the industry.

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That's too many numbers to keep track of, and hopefully, the review bombs will open people's eyes, but I don't count on it. People are dumb as fuck, and will just buy it anyway.

I don't give a shit about gamepass, but i'm worried about the future of modding in games like Starfield and/or ElderScroll with them not on steam. Can you still mod games installed on xbox app (on windows) without extra pain in the ass? (like access to the usual needed folder)

Edit:

i shouldn't be worried then.

Chapell said:

I don't give a shit about gamepass, but i'm worried about the future of modding in games like Starfield and/or ElderScroll with them not on steam. Can you still mod games installed on xbox app (on windows) without extra pain in the ass? (like access to the usual needed folder)

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Wait, so they aren't putting anything on Steam anymore? I refuse to use their shit tier client software anymore. It installed files and folders across all 4 of my hard drives.

Hekotat said:

Wait, so they aren't putting anything on Steam anymore? I refuse to use their shit tier client software anymore. It installed files and folders across all 4 of my hard drives.

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Edited my post, it's on steam according this page:

It's actually worse than I thought, and definitely not just a 'this is how Game Pass works' issue. They're selling the Hitman Trilogy "Premium" Addons bundle for $60 on Steam, which includes the $10 and $35 upgrades along with the Hitman 3 Deluxe pack. Which they pretend is somehow worth $35 (it's actually just about useless) regular price so people think they're saving $20 by buying the bundle.

On top of all that, no matter what bundle you buy, you still have to buy the Hitman 3 Seven Deadly Sins collection for yet another $30 charge if you really want all the content. Not that anyone should consider this, 7 Deadly Sins got panned hard by just about everyone.... although you might not realize that since it appears they pulled the ol' Steam trick where you delist an existing product and then create a new appid so that all the old reviews go poof.

I almost didn't buy Hitman 3 at all because of how shady the business side of IOI is, and it never ceases to amaze me that they can still sink to entirely new levels every time they release something new. Or in this case, "new". By all means, play the content that's included with Game Pass (if you can with the servers for the completely pointless always-online functionality being overloaded) but you're not missing out on much if you skip over the season pass content for Hitman 1 & 2 and they don't deserve your money.

To clarify, response to Ut, didn't quite (edit again: quote! Ducking mobile) for some reason.

I think it's more the publishers fault GOTY/complete style editions or DLCs are not available on Game Pass. Maybe a distinction without a difference, but I doubt MS's goal is to sell DLCs or prop up micro transaction models.

Why? Because I'm sure they know it's annoying and then people prone to hating MS or XBox use that as another reason to hate them instead of the publishers making those deals and decisions.

Microsoft's focus seems to be all in on Game Pass. And Microsoft studio or published games usually are complete. MS would love if every publisher put their full and complete games on Game Pass. Instead they're having to spend billions to do it themselves.

Making it sound like Game Pass has always just been a way to peddle DLCs isn't really accurate.

Micro transactions have nothing to do with subscription services, because again that's how most of those games are structured in development for all platforms it seems these days, not exclusively for sub services.

A lot of people do care about obscure or terrible indie titles. Can argue it's to the detriment of the industry, but it's a disingenuous absolute trying to claim nobody cares about the indie titles outside of the occasional hit. Personally, several of my favorite games are probably in that category, which is why using absolutes is dumb.

Games like My Friend Pedro.... Is it some ploy to trick unsuspecting gamers into subscribing to Game Pass through misrepresentation? Or just how the publisher keeps doing the contract?

Doesn't seem anything you brought up falls primarily on the shoulders of Xbox or Game Pass, so much as just the nature of the industry, as you acknowledge admitting, say to be fair the other third party services do the same thing. So why blame a service that is no different than the standard for those services, and not the publishers creating the standard?

The argument has to then become that Xbox should do more to correct the annoying practices of publishers and bad decisions of developers.

But they're literally spending billions so they can bypass publishers and developers. Whether that will be a net good for the games or industry is yet to be seen, but it really undermines arguments blaming or tagging on Game Pass like it's only about selling DLCs and hoodwinking subscribers through a bunch of shitty indie games.

Chapell said:

I don't give a shit about gamepass, but i'm worried about the future of modding in games like Starfield and/or ElderScroll with them not on steam. Can you still mod games installed on xbox app (on windows) without extra pain in the ass? (like access to the usual needed folder)


i shouldn't be worried then.

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Can't really do anything using the Xbox app without it being a pain in the ass. But it seems MS/Xbox are trying to play nice with modding more these days. Still not where it should be, but can use mods with quite a few games on Xbox consoles, so there is hope. Modding for Skyrim on Xbox is so vast it's as discouraging and annoying as figuring out mod orders on PC.

I don't know why publishers and service platforms aren't all in on supporting modding, but I guess they don't want to give up control or eat the bad review if a mod breaks someone's game/save.

Utnayan said:

I would agree with you if it wasn't for Forza 5 having the ability to upgrade the vanilla game to ultimate for $49.99 or an entire segment of DLC separate purchases outside of that. (Which honestly, didn't irk me as much because it saved me from purchasing ultimate)

Ubisoft includes all their ultimate editions within their service.

With that said, Microsoft holds the cards. they could easily say GOTY editions of legacy games are what they will support - and publishers get paid per download anyway. In fact, some 3rd party games are complete (Like Pillars of Eternity and it's sequel) Yet MS owns Outer Worlds - No DLC. They Own Fallout 4 - No DLC. They own New Vegas, no DLC. Christ, even Morrowind and Oblivion are still charging for DLC and only giving the Vanilla game. These are all 1st party. Pretty obvious what the intent here is and also what was pitched to 3rd party.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Starfield. I would bet we see a plethora of GaaS shit and a baseline game which resembles free to play.

We will see what Gamepass is really supposed to be in my opinion solidified after seeing the Starfield release. (Which is charging a subscription to baseline a target market for DLC and MTX) over giving true value that they won't even do with games that are 10+ years old.

Conspiracy theory with some weight to it in my opinion: Free to play now locked behind a subscription to baseline the game to sell MTX and DLC - basically a way to capture revenue on traditional F2P titles; IE: Market Conditioning.

And let's be honest, most 1st party games from MS have been pure dogshit since the advent of Gamepass. Halo Infinite is a great example. Not to mention State of Decay 2 (Which admittedly has gotten better) Crackdown 3, Sea of Thieves (Finally gotten better) - With Finally gotten better meaning years since release.

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Most games in general have been dogshit whether related to MS or not since the advent of Game Pass. So, not exactly a solid point.

Not going to pretend to know the publishing terms of every game or franchise. And you may be right. Or like I said perhaps it's a distinction without a difference.

From my perspective, and the point I was making, is when it comes to Game Pass you end up sounding like the guys that hate on Steam because a game studio isn't releasing patches or their ISP can't stay connected.

Take the issue that started this discussion. Literally a problem with a game publisher being dicks that isn't exclusive to Game Pass.

The industry has issues and bad standards of practice, as do game sub services. I'm not sure why it's Xboxes job to fix things within the industry. And they seem to be trying to force some change, but we'll see how it plays out.

What game was it that Xbox negotiated a special patch just for Xbox platforms and people flipped out and got pissed at Xbox and the game developers, as if all patches are universal to all platforms or doing an Xbox patch meant they'd used up all the patch resources and patches for other platforms were then no longer possible.

The practice of offering the base game for free and then having paid expansions or micro transactions is a symptom of the industry, that as you said all services do, not something unique to Game Pass to be uniquely criticized.

Ubisoft's service is a specific service to give access to Ubisoft games. Just a bad comparison to Game Pass.

I guess the question I have is what do you think Game Pass is supposed to be? Because I don't think it's what you want it to be, but criticizing it for the sins of the industry as a whole is weird when there are plenty of very specific and unique criticisms of Game Pass, Xbox and MS to be made.

For instance, the shit show of Forza Horizon 5 is a good example, but still I don't think it's some plan or purpose of Game Pass to provide incomplete base games because the real money is in tricking people into paying for DLCs or micro transactions. That's just how the industry works, and it sucks. And still there is probably some stupid contract where Xbox gets publishing rights but the studio wanted to keep upgrade or dlc pay only for their revenue or some shit.

Maybe I'm just a naive fanboy, but the annoyances like these seem to be a symptom of the gaming industry at the core dictating shit standards, not some plan or even preference of the game services like steam or Game Pass or PlayStation Network. Singling out one and pretending it's a unique issue to that platform/service doesn't make sense to me.

Utnayan said:

I would agree with you if it wasn't for Forza 5 having the ability to upgrade the vanilla game to ultimate for $49.99 or an entire segment of DLC separate purchases outside of that. (Which honestly, didn't irk me as much because it saved me from purchasing ultimate)

Ubisoft includes all their ultimate editions within their service.

With that said, Microsoft holds the cards. they could easily say GOTY editions of legacy games are what they will support - and publishers get paid per download anyway. In fact, some 3rd party games are complete (Like Pillars of Eternity and it's sequel) Yet MS owns Outer Worlds - No DLC. They Own Fallout 4 - No DLC. They own New Vegas, no DLC. Christ, even Morrowind and Oblivion are still charging for DLC and only giving the Vanilla game. These are all 1st party. Pretty obvious what the intent here is and also what was pitched to 3rd party.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Starfield. I would bet we see a plethora of GaaS shit and a baseline game which resembles free to play.

We will see what Gamepass is really supposed to be in my opinion solidified after seeing the Starfield release. (Which is charging a subscription to baseline a target market for DLC and MTX) over giving true value that they won't even do with games that are 10+ years old.

Conspiracy theory with some weight to it in my opinion: Free to play now locked behind a subscription to baseline the game to sell MTX and DLC - basically a way to capture revenue on traditional F2P titles; IE: Market Conditioning.

And let's be honest, most 1st party games from MS have been pure dogshit since the advent of Gamepass. Halo Infinite is a great example. Not to mention State of Decay 2 (Which admittedly has gotten better) Crackdown 3, Sea of Thieves (Finally gotten better) - With Finally gotten better meaning years since release.

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This MS thing is pure shit. Filled mostly with old shit games or new shit games no one cares about...or new games that you need to buy the DLC to actually play...or EA shit launcher or UBI shit launcher that is for some reason on MS's shit launcher. It is all designed to soak you $15 sub on top of a $60 game on top of DLC prices. Pretty soon, they are going to go the AOL route and charge by the hour to play, too.

Really just better off buying on Steam.

Utnayan said:

So hopefully they fucking do something with all of these acquisitions and learn how to manage development cycles with quality work, otherwise it is just baseless marketing hype with no show and all "Look at us" bullshit.

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