Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscription is about as close to “Netflix for games” as you can get. And juLike Netflix, there are ways to get the most for your money. Here are some tips for squeezing everything you can out of a Game Pass subscription.
Consider pony rides for Ultimate.
Like many other media plans, Game Pass is available in multiple tiers. The standard tier is $ 10 per month which gives you access to the Game Pass library and not much else. The PC version – which has its own library full of many overlapping games, but some exclusive games, such as Crusader Kings III—Is $ 10 too, although it cost $ 5 when it was in beta earlier this year.
For $ 15 a month you can get Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which gives you access to both the console and PC Game Pass libraries. You also get a subscription to Xbox Live Gold, Microsoft’s online service, which itself offers four extra games per month through the Games with gold program. Ultimate members can do that too stream games directly to Android devices (and, next year, iOS versions as well). Starting in November, Ultimate will be bundled with EA Play, a games-on-demand service full of EA video games and sports ads. Game Pass Ultimate is also starting to add first-party expansions at no additional cost, a perk not available to standard tier members.
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It is obvious that Microsoft wants to lead subscribers to the higher price. In anticipation of a serious rise in sticker price, the math comes out for now to justify the jump – in most cases. Switching from the Basic level to Ultimate is worth it if …
- You plan to pay full price for three tent-pole Xbox games in a calendar year.
- You plan to pick up both the console and PC Game Pass plans.
- You plan to subscribe to at least two of the following: Game Pass, Xbox Live Gold, or EA Play.
The $ 15 monthly price can be daunting, especially in an era of subscription fatigue, but there are a few methods for cutting costs. For starters, your first three months currently costs only a dollar (total), but once that expires, Microsoft will automatically charge your card for a monthly renewal at the higher rate. Cancel Game Pass will not delete your saved data for any games you have played with the service. You can resume any game where you left off by purchasing the game physically, digitally, or re-subscribing to Game Pass.
Digital retailers sometimes offer three- or one-year cards for Ultimate that add up to less than the total cost. You can also convert codes for other Microsoft subscriptions to months of Ultimate, provided you’re already an Ultimate member, which can cut costs a bit. Say you’re on a code for a year of Xbox Live Gold. You can exchange that for four months of Game Pass Ultimate. (Here’s a complete list how many months of Ultimate your codes will match exactly.)
Finally, consider finding a friend who plays the PC – a friend you trust – and split the costs. At this point, the PC player gets the short end of the stick as EA Play is not currently folded in the PC library. (That will happen next year for some timeYou and your friend can certainly achieve a fair split, and you can both play games at the same time with the same account, as long as you’re not trying to play, for example, Halo multiplayer.
Of course, play the hits …
Game Pass’s main asset is that you can play massive games without having to use GameStop or hand over more money to the Bezos empire. First-party games, such as Gears 5 and The outer worlds, land on the first day of service. Next year is planned Halo infinite will too. If you want to play all of the biggest Xbox games at launch without paying $ 60 each, Game Pass is the way to do that. Major third-party games such as Check, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and Tales of Vesperia– also cycling in and out of the library all the time.
Many of Microsoft’s first-party games are optimized for the Xbox Series X and S, allowing for faster loading speeds, higher frame rates and sharper resolutions. And the one with compatible displays can use 120fps modes for that Ori and the likes of the wisps, Gears 5, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Game Pass is an equally good excuse to replay old games or watch them for the first time.
… but don’t sleep on the indie gems.
As good as Game Pass is for scoring access to big games, it’s even better for discovering smaller ones. For every power or Halo or third-party blockbuster, there is an under-the-radar gem that you otherwise wouldn’t have looked at twice. The next dozen, if you missed them, are at least worth checking out:
Most of the best games on Game Pass are relatively small – a handful of gigabytes at most, and usually less than 1 GB – so even those with strict data limits can download them with little consequence. If you only skim the surface and play the greatest hits, you will miss a lot of great games.
Filter the libraries.
Since there are hundreds of games in the library, browsing alphabetically can be tedious. But you can fine-tune it with some useful filters. All you need to do is open Game Pass from “My Games and Apps”, instead of the default Game Pass dashboard icon. If you scroll to “full library” in “My Games & Apps”, you should see two tiles: one for Xbox Game Pass and one for EA Play. Viewing the library through this allows for robust categorization options not available in the standard Game Pass console app. You will have to look at the EA Play and Game Pass libraries separately rather than the all-encompassing treasure you would find in the Game Pass app.
In the top row, you should see an icon that looks like an upside-down funnel for high school science classes. Clicking this will allow you to filter by genre (platformer, shooter, role-playing, etc.), by console (Xbox and Xbox 360 games, Xbox One games or next-gen ‘optimized’ games), and multiplayer options (online whether local, cooperative or competitive). If you just want to use Game Pass to view all the games that have been updated with next generation upgrades, you can do that. If you’d rather see what puzzle games local co-op offers, you can do that too.
Preload games.
In some cases, Game Pass allows you to pre-load known upcoming games. For example, at this point you can pre-install The medium. After a delayBloober Team’s upcoming multidimensional nightmare won’t land on Game Pass until January 28, 2021, but you can get the 38 GB download out of the way now.
Buy some rechargeable AA batteries.
Xbox controllers still use AA batteries, so this is never a bad idea.