Tobold's Blog
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
 
The added value of not having to decide

So I was watching CohhCarnage, one of the Twitch streamers I am following, and he was playing a game I had never heard of: Eternal Strands. It comes out later today, and is an action adventure involving killing monsters, looting them for parts, and improving your equipment by crafting stuff with those monster parts. Not a game I would usually buy, because while I do like crafting, I failed at previous attempts to get into the Monster Hunter series of games, because I am simply to slow in the button-mashing required for combat. Still, Eternal Strands looked interesting, and so I watched the stream for a while. And then Cohh said that the game would be available from day 1 on Game Pass.

That completely changed my perspective about Eternal Strands. It went from "looks interesting, but not something I would buy" to "looks interesting, I should try it out". I don't know yet how much Eternal Strands will cost on Stream, it is still 3 hours until release, but it will probably be something like €40+. Action games have the disadvantage that it is harder to judge from watching a stream how well I would be able to play them. So, being uncertain about my ability to play it, and the game being slightly out of my comfort zone, it is unlikely that I would have bought it on Steam. But I am thinking that beyond "saving" €40 by playing Eternal Strands on Game Pass, there is some added value here by being able to try a game outside my comfort zone without risk. Game Pass makes me play games I otherwise wouldn't have. And there is some value to that, even if in a few hours I find out that I don't like Eternal Strands.

Comments:
I also saw Cohh play this game and I'm beginning to wonder if being on Gamepass Day 1 is a good idea for these types of games.

I'm a big fan of Battletech/MechWarrior and recently the developer of the modern games just laid off a bunch of staff due to poor sales, despite what making what the community generally consider is the best game they've ever made in MW5:Clans.

That game was also on Gamepass Day 1 and that's where I played it.

Gamepass is great for us as consumers but I can't help but think for smaller single player games with low replayability that Gamepass might hurt their sales more then it helps.
 
There is certainly a business decision made here, that the money Microsoft pays as a fixed payment for a game compensates for the lost sales. I can easily see that calculation going wrong either way. For example there was a leaked Microsoft document showing Microsoft offering Larian Studios $5 million for Baldur's Gate 3, which in hindsight was obviously way too low. But I also played The Lamplighter's League on Game Pass, and that game was a complete flop and Microsoft most probably overpaid for it.
 
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