Game Pass for PC is Microsoft’s offering to PC gaming, mirroring their Xbox service. It’s gone through a lot of changes over the years, but is it still worth it?
When Game Pass for PC was first offered, it seemed like a steal. Lots of great games, at a cheap price. However it wasn’t without its failings. The services required use of the Xbox app, which started off life in a less than perfect form, often being riddled with bugs, and having issues such as creating large amounts of install data, that didn’t properly remove when uninstalled. It was also prone to crashing and rather unintuitive.
Largely, those issues with the UI have now been resolved. The app itself is a breeze to use, it’s easy to find games, runs a lot better, and doesn’t seem to have those annoying issues with installs anymore. It isn’t perfect though. One main feature it lacks to Steam is a comparable ‘Big Picture’ mode. This means if you are the type of gamer that likes to use a PC more like a console and have it plugged into a TV, navigating through with a gamepad – you’ll be out of luck.
There’s also no way to launch into non Xbox app games through the launcher, meaning you will still have to use it alongside others. It does feature bespoke integrations with the EA and Ubisoft apps, but there’s no way to launch games installed locally or on Steam with it, and considering most PC gamers have the bulk of their collection outside of Microsoft store-bought games, that is an issue. You can buy non game pass games on the app, but they are often quite expensive. There is now a compact mode which means those using handheld devices can have a slightly cleaner interface, but it’s more of a tweak than anything.
That being said, PC gamers are pretty used to nuisances. Most of us have had to go through countless launchers in our time, having to mod games to work properly, change files, enter codes, fiddle with drivers, all sorts just to get games working. PC gamers by and large are typically okay with meddling. It’s now much easier to do that meddling too. In the past, games installed with Xbox would go to some weird hidden folder location that was difficult to access and even harder to update, requiring admin privileges. Now, all games are in a neat ‘XboxGames’ folder on your main drive by default, giving you access to do whatever you need to do.
So, what about the games themselves? What does Microsoft offer with the service? Games will differ by region, so I’m going to be explaining how it looks to a customer in the United Kingdom, but in the main a lot of the offerings are fairly similar. Currently, Game Pass for PC costs £7.99 a month, and they often have introductory deals which can get you entry much cheaper.
Thanks to various deals with EA and Ubisoft, as well as Microsoft’s acquisitions over the past few years, the answer is quite a lot. You get all of Xbox Game Studios titles, such as the Forza games, Sea of Thieves, all the Halo games, a couple of the Gears titles, and of course, the Age of Empires series. In addition, you get titles from studios Microsoft owns, like Starfield, Hi-Fi Rush, Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein, Sunset Overdrive and more.
There’s a great deal of third party support too. There’s recent big hitters like Persona 3 Reload, Cities Skylines II, Crusader Kings 3, Palworld and a fair bit of indie support too. There really is a great deal of choice here. It’s basically an instant game library, perfect for someone who perhaps isn’t sure exactly what they want to play next and wants the choice.
That is really the crux of whether or not Game Pass for PC will be worth it for you. It’s really perfect for the kind of game you want to download on a weekend, have a play through and then delete. It’s not great for games you will be playing for years, buying all the DLC and enjoying religiously. That’s because you don’t own the games, and they can be removed from the service. You might be the kind of gamer that buys one game a month on sale from Steam and sticks with that, not having the free time to play much more. If that applies to you, Game Pass might not be worth it, as you’re not suddenly going to get the time to play all these other games, and buying something you know you’ll enjoy might be better value.
If you’re a gamer that knows what you want, and will only play certain titles, it’s probably better to just stick to buying them on Steam. If you’re somewhere in the middle, or someone just getting into PC gaming that wants to try out a bunch of stuff to see all different genres, then it’s completely worth it.
Ultimately, I’d say give it a try. If you can get an introductory deal for a couple quid, my recommendation is to just go for it and have a look around. If you like what you see, you’ll probably get your moneys worth. If you have a look at the titles and realise you won’t use it much, cancel it and use the money elsewhere. It’s certainly not going to replace Steam anytime soon, but as a supplement, it can be really great.
This was not a sponsored post. Just something I wanted to talk about! The last game I looked at which is available on Game Pass, is Tales of Arise.
