Xbox Game Pass - Anyone else ditiching it?

[Dos_Box]

After many, many years of subscribing to Game Pass, I have now reduced this to the PC Game Pass. Mainly because my son uses this heavily.
Given the choice, I would have unsubscribed completely, especially as the only games I play on my Xbox on a regular basis are ones I'd bought myself.
The price hikes have just been silly. I would quote the famous word created by Cory Doctorow's, but don't want to break our own profanity rules. 
Anyone else either unsubscribed or reduced their subscription?

[paulkerton]

I'm thinking about reducing it down to Premium from Ultimate. I just can't justify the price anymore for how much I play, and Microsoft can't justify the cost based on the lack of quality that they've put out with their first party titles.

[Dos_Box]

I may also be looking at cancelling my Spotify subscription as my new NAS allows me to stream live from it.

[ZeroHour]

You can use top up time vouchers from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Xbox-Ultimate-Console-Month-Membership/dp/B07SDJ8SGC/ at the old price and stack up to 3 years of ultimate as a cheap way to continue for a bit.

[machy]

Whilst its expensive, I still think its pretty good value.

But then I Can be very squirrely with what games i play, so being able to play whatever tickles my brain (or use game streaming to try something) is well worth it for me.

 

Also games like OW2, I am enjoying my time but i am glad its on gamepass as i would not have been happy spending retail on it 

[AlistairB1983]

I stopped paying for mine about 20 or so months ago, coincidentally about the same age as my son.

 

Were I actually to have time to game anymore, I probably would still be subscribed as there's several titles on it currently that I'd dearly love to play. Maybe in a few years once he actually starts sleeping properly I might be able to dust off the Xbox again.

[ovenchips]

I get ultimate bundled in with my phone contract so will be keeping it for the time being, but wouldn't be surprised if they start offering a lower version or ditch it entirely in the near future, I probably wouldn't miss it either way! I think I'd prefer the Playstation equivalent at this point as I haven't powered up my Series X in months, and the xbox app on PC is so poor to the point that I mostly end up buying gamepass games on steam instead these days.

[NegativeKillDeath]

I have PC Pass only and at the moment I'm happy to keep it, Plenty on there that I still play, some new like Pacific Drive, the Tony Hawk re releases, Sea of Thieves, Atom fall, NMS. Some older, State of Decay 2 gets regular revisits. 

 

If I actually did the maths it may come out that I should ditch it and buy what I want but it would be close. Not that I'd be wanting for games given my steam back catalog of unplayed games. 

[Cat_Jam148]

My friends and I currently pay for the PC pass which keeps us topped up with plenty of multiplayer/co-op games, so we'll probably be keeping it. 

 

I'll probably end up upgrading to the ultimate due to the inclusion of the Fortnite Crew pass, which I already pay for. The cost to subscribe to both roughly equal out but with the added bonus of the Ubisoft classic on GamePass.

[CHiLL]

I did the cheap way of 3 years of Ultimate three years ago and it expires next month. I only need PC game pass and I don't know what the cheapest way to do that anymore is.

[drutt]

PC GamePass is a bargain even at £13.49 per month so I'll be keeping that.

 

I fully expect MS to go all in with a pre-built PC as their next-gen "console", something cheaper than a typical pre-built PC but more expensive than a console.

[Dos_Box]

3 minutes ago, drutt said:

I fully expect MS to go all in with a pre-built PC as their next-gen "console", something cheaper than a typical pre-built PC but more expensive than a console.

I think that was the original Xbox with it's off the shelf PC components. As regards the price of their next-gen console, given the price rises of the Series X and S this year (primarily due to tariffs), I hope they take a good look at the market and where it should fit.
Not at all helped by the very silly decision that Xbox should be making 30% profit across the board (games, hardware etc.).

[ZeroHour]

4 hours ago, ovenchips said:

I get ultimate bundled in with my phone contract so will be keeping it for the time being

EE?

I imagine EE will be getting rid of the perk at some point, you cant easily turn it back on if you change your perk away. It doesnt work on their site last time I tried it and the EE short code for perks didnt list it but I replied "XBOX" and it let me switch it back then thankfully as thats a huge value perk with the new pricing.

 

4 hours ago, ovenchips said:

the xbox app on PC is so poor to the point that I mostly end up buying gamepass games on steam instead these days

There is an update coming which *supposedly* will improve download speeds and a few other things but we will see.

[ovenchips]

18 hours ago, ZeroHour said:

EE?

I imagine EE will be getting rid of the perk at some point, you cant easily turn it back on if you change your perk away. It doesnt work on their site last time I tried it and the EE short code for perks didnt list it but I replied "XBOX" and it let me switch it back then thankfully as thats a huge value perk with the new pricing.

 

There is an update coming which *supposedly* will improve download speeds and a few other things but we will see.

Yep EE, I haven't looked at my perks in the past year but when I had to cancel it temporarily last year due to an MS bug stopping any 360 online services from working with a prepaid subscription, it was still all good then.  I'm fully expecting it to disappear at some point soon though!

 

Generally my issues with the xbox app besides performance are the game builds themselves, the xbox app builds have more than once just had random omissions from the regular steam/epic/gog releases where features or settings are missing for no particular reason - a few recent games have had DLSS and various other graphics options completely missing which took the devs a few weeks to patch back in - would rather not deal with that and just buy the games outright!

[pete]

I'm buying PC Gamepass via the Amazon vouchers route and so far it's still decent value for me (vs buying games I'm only likely to play once on Steam).

 

If that's no longer the case at some point, I'll cancel it (or cancel it until enough decent games have built up again for it to be worthwhile).