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.
Falcom has announced Dragon Slayer Project, its tentatively titled 45th anniversary project for console. A genre, specific platforms, and a release date were not announced.
Yes! I wonder what it will play like. This is where Trails originates from a long time ago. Super interested
AMD’s Ryzen 7000X3D and 9000X3D processors are by far the best gaming CPUs on the market. They’re affordable, power-efficient, and don’t require expensive AIO cooling solutions. I recently tested several of AMD’s midrange Ryzen 7000 and 9000 chips, including the 7950X, 7800X3D, 9700X, 9800X3D, and 9850X3D.
Xenoblade Chronicles series composer Manami Kiyota has possibly finished the final orchestra recording for the next Monolith Soft title.
Makes sense. It's been nearly 3 years since the DLC for 3 came out. The next Xenoblade or whatever they end up calling it will probably come out next year.
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.