It's been amazing value for me - I'd spent a decade away from video games outside of Nintendo, so I had a giant backlog - I've played over 100 in the last 12 months on my Series X.
However, I'm noticing diminishing returns, since I'm spending a lot of time on games like Mass Effect, which are cheap to buy. There's also a lot of games in genres I don't like e.g JRPG, fighting, sports, and also plainly bad games.
The balance of good new games vs ones leaving the service is pretty poor, too. If I wasn't locked into another year, I'd drop it for a while.
TLDR - look at the catalogue, work out how much it would cost to buy the games you'd play, and then decide.
Depends on your existing library of games.
I am absolutely loving it. I have both a Series X and a Rog Ally. Been playing all the AAA games on the X while leaving the Indies to my Ally.
It's probably the first thing I suggest to people that are not regular gamers, and are getting back into things.
Even for myself, someone who buys plenty of releases, each month I ask myself "Could I maybe unsubscribe from Game Pass?" and then they make announcements of a bunch of cool games appearing on it soon.
Admittedly, psychology results in me playing a number of old, familiar games, but I'm still really happy for the indie games that get attention they otherwise wouldn't.
It's been more worth it than any other gaming purchase I've ever made. I've played several 100 hour AAA games to completion. And then also smaller indie games I'd never have touched otherwise, but ended up loving.
And sometimes I download a game I'm curious about and I don't like it so I delete it after 10 minutes. I never have to think about that game again. Without game pass it would still be in the back of my head, do I want to play that one someday?
It's only been $10/month for ultimate because every year in November Target has had 3 month cards on sale and I've picked up a set.
I honestly can't imagine not having it. As a deal it's been too good to be true. So I don't expect it to last forever. I imagine the library will be less impressive 5 years from now. But I'm enjoying it while it lasts.
It depends on if you're going to use all the features of Ultimate vs just the standard Game Pass offering. I only play on PC, so I only pay for PC game pass as I won't use the extras of Ultimate.
But the game library offerings of Game Pass is great. It's a tough value to beat for all the games you get for that monthly price.
If they're still doing the Xbox live upgrade for $1 deal, it's definitely worth it. Get a year of Xbox live off Amazon and upgrade it. If that deal isn't around anymore, I'd probably say no. Though Starfield being up soon will nice.
You can look into the list of games on Game Pass before buying it and see what you're interested in. It's totally worth it for a few months imo to finish your high priority games, but I wouldn't keep it for an extensive period of time since it's pretty expensive.
I would say yes. For me it's nice not having to buy random games for my kids on the Xbox that they may or may not keep playing. There's such a large library on Game Pass for them to mess around with. For me, being able to stream games to my phone/tablet and PC has been a game changer. I usually don't play faster paced game so the occasional signal dip (only on my phone and tablet) doesn't bother me and I can play the same save across all devices. And if I'm being honest if I'm on a decent connection the gameplay is perfectly fine mobile.
Only if you are on console.
If you are on PC just get the normal one
It depends what you want. If you play on console and PC then maybe if you also like the games offered. And maybe even cloudgaming on a mobile phone or tablet but that's often only possible with a controller.
For me the gamepass is great cause I like playing on pc and Xbox and I share it with my girlfriend, so there is always a game she or I like. And a big take away for me is the "demo" mode. I have really bad motion sickness, so I can't play a lot of games. But the bad part is, most games are great the first couple of hours cause it's mostly a tutorial area and these often are better then the rest of a game. So even if I'm allowed to get a refund if I played less then 2 hours, its mostly 3-4 hours after the motion sickness startes. And after that I have lost 60-80 bucks for a game I can never play again. And with the gamepass I can try a lot of games I'm not sure I can play and can just stop if it's not working, without loosing extra money. I tried so many games in the last months I wouldn't have bought and some of them I can play a the way till the end. It's great!
I got a free couple months on a code, instantly liked it, got into Microsoft Rewards to keep it rolling and haven't looked back. Only bought one game since starting it. Played loads of stuff I wouldn't have given a go prior and lived some of them, there's a lot of choice. I think it's pretty great.
It's been worth it for me.. gotten to try a lot of games I wouldn't have otherwise. And it's an especially good deal if you have kids!
I just signed up for GamePass (I don't have a console). The first month is a euro or a dollar in the US - I know this because it thought I was in the US and I had to change my settings in Windows. So, I guess you can try it out if you have a PC you play games on.
