Xbox Game Pass for Console, PC, and Android

Not on the list for games added this month, but just showed up on the PC app is Supraland: Six Inches Under. I guess it was launched for consoles yesterday and it was added as a surprise drop. If you haven't played the original Supraland, it's a first person exploration-heavy metroidvania.

I am really surprised Microsoft has the three year upgrade deal still going. I let my Game Pass Ultimate lapse a couple of months ago and just came back. Bought 3 years of Xbox Live Gold on Costco.com for $55 each, redeemed them, then upgraded 3 years of Gold to 3 years of Game Pass Ultimate for $15.

Total cost for 3 years = $180, or $5 per month. Pretty good deal!

Outriders is still fun.

You get to keep 360 games forever. Games after that system are only available with an active sub.

If you resubscribe anything that was previously claimed is available to you again.

Iron Brigade is the one that springs to mind - tower defence meets third-person shooter. Not as complex as some of the other stuff you mention, but lots of fun in co-op.

I'm assuming they're holding the big Game Pass guns for their showcase in a couple week.

Dordogne art is crazy good.

Anyone else have issues with save data management on the Game Pass versions of games?

Up until very recently, I've never had any cause for complaint -- all the cloud save management features have just worked seamlessly as they should. Granted, I haven't actually made that good a use of Game Pass and so the number of games where I've really needed it to work is pretty small, but I've played more than enough games that have used it over the years.

However, twice in the last month while playing the Game Pass version of Chained Echoes I've launched the game to find that my save data had reverted to an earlier state. The first time it only erased about an hour of play time, but just last night it somehow messed up the sync so badly that it reverted me to a state that was from two days earlier, effectively erasing six to eight hours of playtime.

As I was just saying over in the Chained Echoes thread, thankfully I had just reached a point in the game where a bunch of exciting new mechanics had opened up, so I'm going to push back through. However, I'm not going to do it on the Game Pass version anymore -- I bought the Steam version and moved my saves over to that.

Granted, the issue here might just be this game's specific implementation of the Xbox Cloud save data sync system, but if it fails once (and indeed, a second time), it might as well not exist at all. One poorly managed sync is enough to break your heart and ruin a game for you, you know?

Anyway, just curious if other folks have had similar issues, or if my previous experience of it being appropriately reliable is more the norm.

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Either way, though, this turned out to be the final nail in the coffin for my Game Pass subscription.

Since Microsoft started making all their Xbox exclusives available on the PC, I haven't had much use for the console -- it basically now exists for the very rare times when my spouse is interested in playing a multiplayer game with me or something. And, outside of when that happens, I've also stopped having much interest in online multiplayer games on my own, so no need to retain the Xbox Live Gold tier subscription either.

As for game access, with big AAA titles I'm one of those suckers who generally ends up buying the upsell version for the digital extras, and with smaller games (such as the last three games I played via Game Pass, Chained Echoes, Citizen Sleeper, and Sentiment) I always end up feeling guilty and wishing I had bought the game outright to give extra support to the developers.

And while I had been using it as a way to sample games I wouldn't normally try, of course, that's very easy to justify as a use case when you are on a multi-year $1 subscription. It makes significantly less sense when you're back to $15 a month, without even an option for an annual discount anymore.

So, the most legitimate remaining value from the subscription for me was having the option to play those smaller games in multiple locations thanks to cloud data sync and the cloud streaming service. But, that too was a small use case -- I generally don't prefer playing any game in a mobile format, so I mostly just used that on rare occasions when I had downtime during a vacation or whatever. And for that use case, I can just do month at a time subscriptions, and pick smaller games that I can enjoy completely in that context, since I really don't think I can stomach another cloud data sync failure like the one I had last night.

Even still, though, definitely a melancholy moment this morning turning off recurring payments. I've had an active Xbox Live subscription in one form or another for over 20 years now, ever since playing MechAssault on the original Xbox. Even though realistically I haven't really made much use of it for years now (hell, I was barely breaking even during some of those $1 years -- mostly it saved us having to buy the last two Gears of War games to play together), but still, it marks the end of a pretty significant era in many ways.

I know I'm super late, but stacking is really adorable, and a fantastic game.

I'm so curious about Exoprimal and do love (LOVE) automation games, so maybe it's time to resub for a little while! Anyone tried those?

I never thought I'd unsub, but I was spoiled for riches and could not possibly focus on so many games.

Have y'all seen the new Game Pass Basic that replaces Xbox Live Gold? Just a rebrand, I guess.

"Coming Soon" I suppose. The official Xbox video I saw on it didn't mention when it's rolling out.

It also means you will no longer be able to do the Gold conversion trick to get multiple years for $5 a month, so maybe look into that now if you have a lapsed subscription.