Xbox have announced overnight that any Xbox One titles published by Microsoft Studios will arrive on the Xbox Game Pass digital delivery platform on the same day as their retail launch. This is actually pretty huge news. Here’s why.
So what the hell is Xbox Game Pass? I’m going to make myself sound like a real dick at this point and offer this over-used comparison for simplicity’s sake: think of Netflix, and then apply it to the Xbox game library. That’s the kind of situation we’re talking about. 11 bucks a month, hundreds of games at your disposal.
This Game Pass update means that if you own any machine in the Xbox One hardware family, you basically won’t need to buy any new Xbox exclusives again if you don’t want to. Instead, you sign up to Xbox Game Pass, which is a subscription-based service of $10.95 AUD per month. Want to jump into Sea of Thieves on launch day but aren’t wanting to fork out between $70 and $100 for the pleasure? Here’s your in.
The thing about Game Pass up to this point has been that new releases didn’t show up until months after release. Now they’ll be up there day-and-date so you can start playing right away. This is another elbow in the ribs from Microsoft to its competitor — Sony’s similar PlayStation Now service currently doesn’t offer new release content on launch day. So, for Xbox owners, pretty good really, and a great incentive for Microsoft to start digging deep on those exclusives the Xbox One sorely needs. The catch for Australian players, of course, is that many Xbox One games, particularly those optimised for Xbox One X, will require a bloody sturdy internet connection to pull games down in a timely manner.
You can read all about the update in the blog post over at Xbox Wire. You can also sign up to Xbox Game Pass here and get yourself a 14-day trial, after which you’ll be billed at the regular rate.
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