Today, we live in a society in which consumers want products here and now. Thanks to the digital era we are currently living in, consumers can purchase the products they want within a couple clicks on their computers. Possibly the most impatient consumers seen today are consumers within the video game industry. This is because gamers pre-order games under the assumption that game will release on the set release date, however, game developers have seemed to be delaying games more often than past years. With the price of video games rising as time goes on, gamers find this unacceptable.
Luckily, it seems as if Microsoft may have the solution that will leave gamers satisfied.
A few months ago, Microsoft announced a new gaming service called Xbox Game Pass. Xbox Game Pass would allow gamers to download Xbox titles to their consoles for a limited amount of time for a monthly fee of $9.99. Similar to Netflix or Hulu. This meant that Xbox owners could have access to a library of over a hundred games instantly without dropping hundreds of dollars. When they are done playing a specific game they simply delete it. This made a lot of people question the future of gaming retailers, such as GameStop.
As if Xbox Game pass wasn’t good enough, Microsoft recently announced a new addition to the premium gaming service. According to The Know, Xbox spokesman Phil Spencer announced that game pass would now include newly released Xbox exclusives the same day they are released to the public. Considering that there are supposed to be a ton of Xbox exclusives released in 2018, this announcement really took the video game industry by storm.
Ever since the launch of the Xbox One, Microsoft has been receiving endless backlash as the Xbox One seemed to deconstruct a lot of the milestones made by the Historic Xbox 360. This is because there were almost no exclusive titles and no unique feature that stuck amongst its competition. Xbox Game Pass was designed to tackle both these feats and Microsoft has been teasing that this is only the beginning of many unique ways that Microsoft will be addressing video games in future gaming generations. While the newly added feature to Xbox Game Pass may not have an overwhelming effect on the Xbox One, this will surely set Microsoft up for greatness for the next generation of gaming.
The new announcement to Xbox Game Pass has certainly revitalized the Xbox One in the digital era that we are currently living in. Considering the countless backlash that Xbox One has received, the newly updated Game Pass gave us a glimpse of what the Xbox brand used to be during the reign of the Xbox 360. While there are competing services that are similar, such as PlayStation Now, the new addition of same-day exclusives on Xbox Game Pass definitely raised the bar. No matter which side you fell on during this generations console war, there is no denying that this was spark Microsoft needed.
