DamnLag: Have you played the Rayman Origins demo? Blimey, it’s good. I’ve played through the demo about five or six times now, and I can’t get over just how much fun it is. It takes the framework of New Super Mario Bros. Wii and applies it brilliantly to the formula laid out by the original Rayman back in 1995. It’s beautiful to look at, too: lush, living 2D worlds that are stunningly animated. Lava bubbles, winds blow, and creatures live. As a gamer and an animation fan, it’s easy to feel a little giddy about it.
I’d read next to nothing about the game before playing the demo. I knew it was in development, and I’d seen Ubisoft promoting it at this year’s E3, but beyond that I hadn’t really been able to muster up the enthusiasm to really look into how development of the game was progressing. The excitement and anticipation I feel for this game has been generated almost entirely by the game’s demo, and that’s a rare experience.
Most developers these days consider demos to be something of an after-thought, if they even bother to think of them at all. One of the major drawbacks of the demo is that the play is generally limited to the first few levels. As these beginning levels tend to feature mostly tedious, tutorial gameplay or plot-driving narrative, the player finds themselves spending ten minutes learning to play a game they’ll only be playing for, at best, another five before they’re presented with a video reel of how brilliant the final product is, and a listing all of the reasons why they should buy it.
Starting today, Game Pass Ultimate drops from $29.99 to $22.99 a month. PC Game Pass will also drop from $16.49 to $13.99 a month. Prices may vary by region.
Beginning this year, future Call of Duty titles won’t join Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch. New Call of Duty games will be added to Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass during the following holiday season (about a year later), while existing Call of Duty titles already in the library will continue to be available.
Its nice there is some kind of drop... but is that all they really value CoD to be, a lousy $7 a month?
I was hoping it would drop by $10.
That $7 equates to $84 per year - which is more than COD new ($69.99 + tax).
So - you can get the exact same thing - and save a few bucks - or you can skip COD and pocket the savings or use toward another game - or games if on sale.
That’s how I’m taking it - and is enough for me to sign back up after canceling the day it went to $29.99.
It's unlikely that COD is going to be the only title they stop offering day one, but we'll see how they play their hand.
Including Call of Duty in Game Pass is just leaving money on the table. When the Elder Scrolls VI releases hopefully Microsoft doesn’t launch it into Game Pass. Then it can make more profits and use it give more value to Xbox console owners!
Can’t wait to hear how this will be spun extremely positive. 🤣
I wonder why knowing Microsoft thick head something must has happened in the background in the levels of Xbox one and Kinect 🤷🏿
Any price cut is a good thing in this day and age, but it also reveals a flaw in GamePass' design that we've all been calling out for years... it's unsustainable, especially with day and date releases on new games. COD won't be the only game they exclude, they're setting a precedent with it that they'll likely expand upon in the future.
At least they're being realistic about it now. I bet in the future we're going to start seeing them try to subsidize the high price of new consoles by making you buy 2-3 years of gamepass with it to get the console cheaper. I'm still not sure that'll be enough to save either the hardware or gamepass, but we'll see.
price cuts are good, the removal of Call of Duty is clearly something they are planning to leverage. But considering everyone around N4G claims Call of Duty sucks, it's not a big loss now is it?
Well, they're removing their biggest game from being Day 1 on the service so GamePass users can buy it instead. That's the intention.
They increased the price to $30, then removed COD and dropped it to still be above the old price.
It's an understandable compromise but the consumer Ultimately is getting less.
Think the calculation is that *most* COD users don't play that many games and aren't interested in GamePass. The GamePass users who do like COD would just buy it anyway. MS reportedly lost out a lot of money last year putting COD on GamePass.
Well Call of duty could just be the beginning. What other games can they trim from the service to get the price down? How long before it's just the Xbox core first party studio games and not the one to everquired?
Create an interesting scenario with Call of duty as well. Will people wait a year to play it? Does that split the fan base? Will it hurt to Call of duty more than a benefits Game pass? These are all legitimate questions which we will find the answers to in the coming years
And I don't consider my post negative spin just realistic observation. At the very least this backtracking can be seen as an admittance that the previous strategy of gamepass was not sustainable as most of us said.
I'd get rid of the EA and Ubisoft+ too. That should bring the price down more. The only game from either of those parts of the service i played was jedi Fallen order / survivor. both of which i also bought on disc so it was more of a convenience i didnt have to put the disc in to play when i was playing them via remote play. And really that is why i still use GPU and PS+. its the convenience of having the games ready to play from a remote location. I havent picked up my consoles controllers in at least a few years. I guess that makes me a bad gamer, but so what. i'm still playing the games, just not physically on the machines themselves. GCloud and Portal are my go to now.
They’ll say no one is buying game pass so they had to drop the price , even though it’s been extremely profitable.
Why remove CoD if it's *extremely* profitable then? Why even increase it to begin with?
Always funny seeing those that defended the price hike go "how you gonna spin this now!" after the price drops.
You should be thanking those that called it out. Obviously this is a good thing especially with everything increasing nowadays.
Also, what happened to the reason why that the Activision acquisition was good for gaming was that CoD would be day one on GamePass? Another backtrack on that I guess...
What removing CoD on GamePass shows, is that it's not sustainable for for the more popular and/or bigger budget games because of the sales you lose out on like people have been saying since inception. It never made sense to put CoD on there unless you thought it's popularity would draw in a lot of subscribers which it obviously didn't. And if it was as sustainable as people claim they wouldn't have increased the price while putting it on there in the first place.
In my region, it’s still more expensive than it was before the last price hike, but it’s a far more viable price point.
Losing Call of Duty from the service, honestly, has zero effect on me, and given they chose to make it so, it’s probably not the big seller they originally thought. Overall, it’s really good news, but I still think they have work to do on the tier structure, having Premium and PC at the same price point with different features feels odd.
Yep take COD out. Them waiting a year is interesting but it make sense. They don't want certain ppl waiting 4 to 6 months they want fomo and maximum sales. Wait a year while the new one releases.
Ok so far so good.
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I like it when demos give you a good taste of a game but don't ruing the experience. Two great examples are God of War III and Arkham Asylum. Both demos give you a custom setup that gives you a bit of variety and hooks you. Then when you play that psrt it's differnt from the demo in reality and it never feels like you played the same thing twice and the enhancements blow you away from the demo to the real deal.
God of War III's demo was insane, but when the actualy game came out I just about crapped my self as my eyes melted out of my head.
the god of war 3 demo was epic.
I think every game should have a demo, I hate when there's a game that I'm on the fence about, and I'm not willing to spend $60 before I try, only to find out it has no demo.
The Rayman Origins demo is fantastic. I agree with Jio ^, every game should have a demo, period. It gives the all gamers atleast a chance to try out the game, if they dont have the money to buy it
Demo's should be compulsory, and have some sort of bonus reward for the full game for trying it out, maybe a skin or weapon, or vehicle or whatever.