Xbox pauses third-party Game Pass deals
Note that "Game Pass deals on hold" is what happens anytime there's been a re-organisation, re-structuring, re-alignment -- basically anything corporate starting with "re-". The dev-facing team has great folks but Xbox at large is always messy politically. www.eurogamer.net/microsoft-xb...
Rami Ismail (رامي)29That doesn't mean things aren't different now. As I discussed on @droppedframes.bsky.social , from afar, Sharma seems like a diligent, thorough, and political human - as you'd expect for someone getting that position out of left-field.
David Llort3They consider that the current Game Pass give "too much value" for the money, and they can't increase more the price, so they plan to slowly decrease the catalogue waiting for the third party contract timing to end without adding new third party games.
I dunno, I understand that independent games journalism is in a rocky place, but it is hard to support a lot of them when they wildly range from "letting you know the BDS boycott is ongoing before our extensive Xbox coverage plus a plug for Game Pass" to "cool new Game Boy from War Crimes Inc"
MercuryCDX14Oh, I guess Time Extension is a Ziff Davis brand so nevermind on that one I guess
PolarBair 🔜 UMAD 202611I felt like I was going insane watching some well-regarded games journalists say outright that if you liked Pragmata you must be a pedo, and people just nodding along instead of calling it out as terribly racist.
benstylus 🐧 The Once and Future Urban Champion8If you're still talking about time extension, they're as corpo as you can get. Owned by Hookshot Media which is owned by IGN which is owned by Ziff Davis.
What do you expect me to be some sort of weenie genie?🏳️⚧️1Its wild. We think it's a sign that all the writers with actual principles have sorta slowly been fired out of the industry
Xbox really wants you to know that 'Call of Duty' is skipping Game Pass at launch. "Not on Game Pass" www.resetera.com/threads/when...
DanTheBrad16Not on gamepass but gamepass still required is fun
knightingael.bsky.social8Still makes it pretty ironic since adding Call of Duty to Gamepass was the entire reason why they bought Activision.
scambot.bsky.social1Seems like an odd way to promote that.
ewan!!! (comms 📌)5THE BRIGHT YELLOW FUCKING LMAO
WittyMitttie3The numbers Microsoft saw after putting a new COD on Game Pass just once must've really spooked them
Bree, Captain of The Unreliable 🌌🎮2Wasn't CoD day 1 on gamepass like one of the biggest reasons Xbox bought Acti-Blizzard? Or am I hallucinating and misremembering? Either way I cackled at this ad. ☠️
after a decade spent trying to justify game pass and a multiplatform release strategy, abruptly turning "not on gamepass" and "not on PS5" (not for COD obviously) into marketing bullet points really does just damn the whole brand at this stage
Dan Pearce18I'm increasingly confident that the plan is to just sell off Xbox to... someone? Their whole marketing approach right now feels like "Xbox is no longer about making bad decisions. It's about making good decisions (which are TBD pending interest)"
Jennifer/Aster Unkle 🏳️⚧️4The way they officially responded to an IGN poll like “We’re seeing all sorts of sales, actually. We’re selling more than ever!” was so embarrassing, lol. For a company obsessed with making a comeback entirely through social media, they sure are bad at social media
