Really, if any game in your Steam library has a playtime of over 500 hours, you may be getting enough value from the games you buy that a catalog service actually becomes worse value by comparison.
I fit in this bucket, and so do a few of my friends. I’ve gotten so used to the Steam gamer lifestyle of waiting for games to go on sale, buying them on sale, and then slowly building up a massive catalog of games that I think I will enjoy gaming. It’s very rare that a hot new game will entice me to play it without waiting for a sale, because I know what it feels like to be disappointed in a $70 purchase.
If there is a hot new game that I am interested in, Game Pass might be appealing because it allows me play a new game for cheaper. But I also don’t play games very quickly, because I’m busy. A narrative single-player game usually takes me at least two months to get through. If I play that game via PC Game Pass, that’s at least $24. Most of the time, I can get a game on sale for $24 or less within 2 years of that game’s initial release.
I also think about how, if I go the Game Pass route, I will feel a pressure to play that game quickly, because I feel like the meter is running and I don’t want to waste my money. This makes it harder to enjoy the game because I am forced to play it at times that I don’t really feel like it. If I instead buy the game on sale, I can pick up and put the game down at my leisure, which just fits my life better. Sometimes waiting for the sale sucks, but I have my backlog to keep me warm.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 months ago
It’s a microsoft product, so according to microsoft it absolutely is. It could be the most profitable product on the planet and they’d say it’s still underperforming.
The_Che_Banana@beehaw.org 3 months ago
Spot on…Seattle tech culture is so toxic