I hope everyone enjoyed the music on the show today! I played some stuff that hasn’t been played in a while, I’m always expanding the library though. If you have any suggestions for music you’d like to hear on the show hit up the comments at the bottom or email admin@yougotfixed.com.
It was E3 week! Lots and lots of things to watch and report on, I’ll let someone else do the heavy lifting on a roundup. Check out the full report by Engadget if you think you fell behind. I’m personally most excited for Starfield, Metroid Dread and (although Sony wasn’t actually at E3) Horizen: Forbidden West.
Out of everything that came up at E3 this year, I think Microsoft’s shift towards a Game Pass future is the biggest. Microsoft was able to break into the video game industry in the first place with an acquisition (in 2000 MS bought Bungie, which game them Halo) so their purchase of Bethesda (and subsequent announcement that Starfield will not be on Playstation) is the next phase of their plan.
Normally I don’t care for subscription services when a normal purchase option is available. I don’t like feeling like I am renting my games, because I never know when I might want to go back to play an older one, and subscribing to a service gives you no control over the library you have access to. If MS wants to drop an older game from the Game Pass library, you are out of luck if you want to play that game again.
I also like the freedom to loan or give my games to friends and family, which you can only do with physical discs. Microsoft almost did away with that as well at the inception of the XBOX One, with digital registration of games and persistent online checks to make sure you weren’t playing a game you didn’t buy. Thanks to massive public outcry (with valid reason, as the plan would have made it impossible to use an XB One if you didn’t have consistent Internet access) that plan was scrapped, but Game Pass is headed down that path again it seems.
“Games as a Service” seems inevitable, but I also think that physical game media will also be around for the long haul. There are still more than enough potential customers without adequate Internet access for a Game Pass-like service to work properly, and Sony seems committed to sticking with the current disc model as well. But it seems like the game-cloud is coming either way, and it may be only a matter of time before a game you want to play is “rental only”.
