The blowhard fake marketing speak on that page makes me nauseous.
As a subscriber to the Xbox version of gamepass this is huge news. Gamepass on Xbox is awesome though my opinion might be colored by the crazy deals they have been doing to promote it. ($1 for 3 months, 50% off 6 month, "free" months through MS rewards, etc) . Still even at full price I think it would have been worth it as I have been able to play a ton of different games.
The weird thing is that the Xbox Game Pass already worked on PC. I haven't checked it since the announcement, but it sounds like they just removed a feature from the original Game Pass and baked it into the Ultimate with a $5 charge tacked on for Xbox Live Gold.
Now you can rent your PC games as well, which I'm not sure is a bad thing as I can't remember a PC game that I went back and replayed. Not counting re-releases.
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Level editor for Mass Effect? It is a single player, story driven game, what the heck are you going to do with a level editor?
Dude almost every game coming out in the 90's had level editing tooks, descent, duke 3d, quake, doom, freespace with fred.
The doom mod community is still going strong after 20 years on the net because devs released mod tools to the community. We now have stuff like Brutal doom.
You clearly either didn't game much back then or were not anything like a hardcore gamer. Many of us played warcraft 2 and custom maps over kali, descent 2 in minerva and all sorts of multiplayer levels, maps and mods.
The vast majority of the games on that list have been listed under $5 on Steam or even given away for free from various sites and bundles. There's a few titles in there that are still a little pricey but in the end, I don't see this being worthwhile when you can just as easily grab it cheap on Steam, play it for two hours, then if you don't like it, refund it. If you do like it, it's yours forever to replay as many times as you like.Huh. Now they say about 100 games - eclectic list, looks pretty worth it IMO.
I said, only really need them for multiplayer games... Mass Effect is not a multiplayer game...
Level editor for Mass Effect? It is a single player, story driven game, what the heck are you going to do with a level editor? The only games that need level editors IMO are multiplayer games, even then they are not always that important. Realistically they all still exist, they are just made for developers now (Epic has lots of tools available for unreal engine).
IMO the games today are better than the games from the 90s.
I agree microtransactions suck, unless they are cosmetic only, then I don't give a f*, but understand the anger.
Mass effect 3 had multiplayer, and you could make single player missions for doom, quake, descent and duke 3d. So once again you seem to lack any kind of insight of what happened in the 90's which makes me think you didn't grow up in the 90's playing games.
I hate the move towards renting, subscription services and not owning or being able to control anything (which applies to much more than just games). To me it has so many downsides.
It makes consumers far more passive and less intellectually-engaged (less modding in games, instead you are supposed to buy tweaks and mods from the publisher/distributor and get nickel-and-dimed along the way).
That nickel-and-diming microstransaction model can also lead to children running up ridiculous bills for their parents to have to deal with, which wasn't really a problem when you just bought a game once, in full, and left the kids to it.
It adds hugely to the complexity of consumption (requiring multiple different subscription and streaming platforms, with different games or movies or books only available from certain services).
It puts everything under the publisher's control.. With the possibility of having items you thought you owned being withdrawn, either just for you because you annoyed the publisher in some way (saying bad things about them on their forum, for example). Or because they've been withdrawn for everyone becuase the publisher has some agenda or are just incompetent.
It makes everyone even more dependent than ever on a bunch of corporations, who could potentially make your entire cultural life disappear if you upset them or if they find it unprofitable.
Subscriptions and paywalls for newspapers and TV channels makes information-bubbles worse, as many people can only afford to subscribe to one newspaper or other information source so they are naturally going to pick the one that has the politics they agree with. Whereas with multiple free sources people are more likely to be exposed to different viewpoints.
(I get that newspapers pretty much had to start going behind paywalls to stay in business, but I do miss the days of being able to read all sorts of newspapers with very different politics, for free)
Yes you had to pay for physical newspapers, but with physical newspapers there was a degree of 'leakage' because you could easily end up reading papers you don't agree with, even if it's yesterday's paper you pick up on the train. But if it's a website and subscription only, you just won't see it if you aren't prepared to pay for it.
One thing I really fear is that it will happen with books next, as they shift from physical objects to digital-only releases.
The only counter-trend seems to be open-source and the distribution of out-of-copyright material.
The subscription/streaming/DRM trend to me means it's all the more important that the duration of copyrights be reduced.
I agree with most of what you said in principle. I think they're thoughtful comments. I agree with you about the outrageous abuse on copyrights.
The same theoretical issue on loss of games you mention, though, exists on Steam - what if it disappeared tomorrow? People get banned on games there also. I just got a permanent ban on Overwatch because too many trolls reported me, and Blizzard doesn't give a crap, and that wasn't a rented game.
The thing that changes my position is that the low price - the sheer value - overwhelms my objections.
These services on MS or Origin are $5/month for access to a lot of games. Just one $30 purchase pays for 6 months. So, the value for the player demands my saying I think it's a pretty good deal. Admittedly, i don't subscribe to them, but probably should - even if the things you mention would rub me the wrong way.
Most places you can get audiobooks from are DRM-free. Downpour, eStories, Libro.fm, even Google Play store IIRC.I also wish I could buy audio books without DRM.
Most places you can get audiobooks from are DRM-free. Downpour, eStories, Libro.fm, even Google Play store IIRC.
Ha, that's my old-man ignorance then - I only ever hear about Audible. Should look into that. Ta.
(I don't want to have to use an app, just plain audio files that I can use on my old-school dedicated digital music player)
a huge chunk of hit games were mods from games from the 90's, dota 2 and league of legends being prime examples that spawned from the warcraft and starcraft modding scene in the late 90's and early 2000's.