Not someone who games on a console, and prefer the PC instead? Microsoft’s all-you-can-play game subscription is coming to Windows.
Microsoft has been making games and games hardware for a long time, but we wouldn’t be surprised to find people who thought it was a totally Xbox related affair. The Xbox has been around for almost 20 years, but even before it, Microsoft was into games, and we’re not just talking Solitaire and Minesweeper.
In the few years before the Xbox brand turned up, Microsoft’s gaming hardware was largely controller based, while its gaming studios was busy turning out titles like “Flight Simulator” and publishing “Age of Empires”, “Starlancer”, “Freelancer”, and others.
Simply put, Microsoft has been making games for Windows for quite some time, and quite a few people are gaming there.
They may not be gaming solely as a game installed to Windows, though, because Valve’s Steam platform has helped to revitalise gaming on Windows.
Released by the creators of “Half-Life” and “Portal”, Steam is a platform that allows people to discover and buy games on a massive network of titles, ranging from simple to complex, and covering independent and large publisher games. It’s something Microsoft has been largely absent from, but in the past week, Microsoft has announced that it will be bringing more titles to Steam.
And it will also be bringing something else to its own Windows-based gaming store: Xbox Game Pass.
If you already know the name, you may know that “Xbox Game Pass” is Microsoft’s all-you-can-play Netflix-like game subscription that charges a monthly price to get you access to a library of over 100 games to play at any one time. They can disappear eventually in the library, and will be replaced by others, but essentially, Xbox Game Pass brings a Netflix-style subscription model to games, and it’s one that’s coming to Windows PC.
“Xbox Game Pass for PC will give players unlimited access to a curated library of over 100 high-quality PC games on Windows 10, from well-known PC game developers and publishers such as Bethesda, Deep Silver, Devolver Digital, Paradox Interactive, SEGA, and more,” said Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox at Microsoft. “And just as we committed on the console, it is our intent to include new games from Xbox Game Studios in Xbox Game Pass for PC the same day as their global release, including titles from newly acquired studios like Obsidian and inXile.”
Not everything found on the game store built into Windows will be a part of the Xbox Game Pass, and much like it is on the Xbox One, some titles will still cost the full price, though Xbox Game Pass for PC subscribers will reportedly get discounts of those games of up to 20 percent.
There’s no release date, pricing, or list of games available for this as of yet, but the considering we’re only a week or two out from the Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3, we imagine Microsoft will have more then.
