Microsoft adopts video games as a service with Xbox Game Pass, a service that allows you to download and play a selection of titles without limit in exchange for a monthly fee of $ 9.99 per month.
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| Xbox One and Xbox 360 |
Subscribers will be able to discover and download any video game from the catalog directly to their console without having to deal with latency or bandwidth issues, since it is not a streaming service in which the game is running on an external virtual machine. Video games are downloaded and run just like any digital purchase in the store on the Xbox One.
Xbox Game Pass is now available for a small number of users who will be able to access more than 100 titles of Xbox One and Xbox 360 among which are studios like 2K, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment or Microsoft Studio among others. It will be available to all Xbox One users this spring.
The catalog will change every month to offer subscribers updates. But you can continue playing any downloaded game, as long as you continue to pay the monthly fee. All software available on the service can be purchased forever with a discount of 20% exclusive to Xbox Game Pass members.
A reform in the business
This is the new idea of Phil Spencer, the top leader of Microsoft's Xbox division, which has been pursuing deep business reforms since taking office in 2014, in a delicate situation with Sony Interactive Entertainment hogging the market with its PlayStation 4 system .
The approach, which has shown its profitability and acceptance thanks to companies such as Netflix or Spotify, could be laying the foundations of a transformation in the distribution of video games in which digital is eating the ground to physical sales channels such as stores Specialized and large areas.
It constitutes a direct threat to the business of companies such as Gamestop, the American retailer specializing in the sale of physical video games, whose shares fell more than 7% after the news was known. In the last quarter of 2016, coinciding with the strongest period of purchase, sales fell 18.7% due to the traction and sales of the digital stores of each platform.
Companies are moving to control both the platforms where they are played and the distribution lines on which video games are acquired. In addition, with a service like Xbox Game Pass, they ensure a steady stream of revenue that could make viable titles focused on a small gaming industry.
It is not the first time in the videogames market that it tries to implement such a formula, but the services always presented several limitations like a scarce catalog or the obligation to play titles through streaming, which seriously penalizes the graphic quality And response times between the action of the player and what is shown on the screen.
Sony has a similar service for its PlayStation 4, but is limited to the catalog of PlayStation 3 through streaming. Xbox has decided to present a more ambitious offer that can constitute the first step to completely transform how the purchase of video games is conceived.
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