By: Nick Gambino
Microsoft has announced their intention to bring the Xbox Game Pass subscription service to PCs.
In the current content medium landscape, streaming is king. Netflix and Spotify are leading examples of video and audio streaming. Second only to streaming is another popular model – a subscription download service. There’s one such platform that has become quite popular in the gaming world – Xbox Game Pass.
Xbox Game Pass is considered the Netflix of gaming (minus the streaming option). For a mere $10 a month (the standard price for nearly any subscription these days) users gain access to over 100 games that they can download directly to their Xbox. This includes all of Microsoft’s titles on the day of release.
Now Microsoft is taking it to the next level by offering the Game Pass to PC gamers. The announcement was made by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during a quarterly earnings call for 2019.
“We are going to make sure that we keep increasing the strength of the community,” Nadella said. “Obviously, bringing Game Pass to even the PC is going to be a big element of that. And then streaming is just a natural extension of that.”
This had been hinted at before by head of gaming Phil Spencer when giving an interview to Variety back in June, and now the CEO obviously felt confident enough to slip it into an earnings call. It only makes sense. Microsoft has been on a mission of sorts to unite gamers across platforms. Cross-console gaming has become more and more popular.
He also noted that they are working towards streaming games as an option. Offering the ability to stream games would be a huge boon for the company in an atmosphere that seems to prefer streaming over nearly every other option. Plus, games take up a lot of storage space, requiring large hard drives and other clever options. This would do away with the need for third-party solutions to house increasingly larger and more graphics-heavy titles.
There’s no word yet on when we can expect the Game Pass to become available for PC, but we’ll keep our eyes open. Meanwhile, Sony needs to kick it into high gear before they get left in the dust. PlayStation hasn’t quite matched the catalog available with the Xbox Game Pass on its own PlayStation Now service, though they offer some streaming options.
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