How things can change in nine years. In 2013, the world seemed relatively stable, or even dull. The global economy was booming, you could cough in public without anyone batting an eyelid, and Microsoft had made such a terrible cockup of its Xbox One to reveal it nearly lost the console before it even started. .
Fast forward to 2022, and it feels like the world is about to implode, but there’s a silver lining, and that’s Microsoft: the champions of the people, the omnipotent of the gamers, the company that changed the Xbox and all around it in not only a great gaming platform, but also a groundbreaking platform, with its bold moves since 2013 forcing its rivals to constantly adapt.
Okay, so I’m submissive to the effect, but the point is, Microsoft and Xbox have had a positive impact on the industry over the past few years. I’m saying this in the wake of Microsoft’s announcement that they are testing a new Family Plan for Game Pass, which will bring it one step closer to that ‘Netflix of Gaming’ dream by allowing up to five people to have separate accounts. within a single subscription. The Family Plan will be slightly more expensive than a regular plan, but apparently it will be much cheaper than five separate accounts.
Then there’s even bigger news that Microsoft plans to make games that people own from outside the Xbox library available to play via cloud gaming (with recent news from VGC suggesting some of these early games might be GTA V and Elden Ring). may contain).
Microsoft is constantly coming up with cost-effective systems for gamers, and Sony is constantly adapting, forcing them too to offer a lot of value. Just look at Playstation Plus, which was only recently redesigned to be more like Microsoft’s Game Pass offering.
Sony’s hunt for Microsoft has become a recurring theme in recent years. The PS5 may still be comfortably ahead of the Xbox series in sales, but this is just the latest of many consumer-friendly moves of varying sizes that have forced Sony to respond with their own equivalent offerings.
It started with the launch of the Xbox One backwards compatibility program in 2015, making hundreds of original Xbox and Xbox 360 games available to play on the Xbox One over the following years. It was a huge PR win for Microsoft; Several years of regularly revealing that hit games like Red Dead Redemption, Halo, Gears of War, older games like Oblivion and Morrowind would be playable on the Xbox One at higher frame rates and resolutions was a great look for the company.
Suddenly those beloved older games were no longer obsolete, but . Bringing consoles a little closer to the luxuries that PC gamers have enjoyed since the dawn of time, owning an Xbox One suddenly became a viable way to enjoy both your older and latest games. Backwards compatibility was nothing new, of course – in fact Sony did this from the PS2 to the early models of the PS3 – but for a while it looked like major game consoles had simply abandoned this player-friendly practice (yes, you could play Wii games on the Wii U, but we said: important console – sorry).
Following the success of Microsoft’s program, backwards compatibility became the buzzword for the launch of the PS5 and Xbox series in 2020, with both consoles offering this to some degree. Sony had to catch up, and even then it couldn’t match Xbox, which had an edge. Where Xbox Series offered support for Xbox One games, as well as all the OG Xbox and 360 games it had already made playable on the Xbox One, the PS5 was limited to PS4 games, while older games were only available through relatively restrictive cloud gaming. .
Since then, Microsoft has been constantly flexing its financial muscles on gaming. After the backwards compatibility revolution, Microsoft started ramping up the value of Game Pass; it added Cross-Buy and Cross-Play to many of its games between Xbox and PC, and Game Pass came to PC in 2019 with the promise that all future first-party Xbox games would launch on Game Pass on day one.
We’ll never know if Sony’s steady rollout to PC of some of its most valuable first-party Playstation games since 2020 is a direct response to Microsoft going cross-platform, or if the recent revamp of PlayStation Plus just happens to make the service more like Game Pass basically has everything to do with Game Pass. However, as long as Microsoft makes all the gamer-friendly moves first, then anything Sony does in the same direction will only look like a reaction to it. Right now, Microsoft is the swift-footed boxer dancing around the ring firing laser-precise jabs as Sony blows itself up to keep up.
It’s not often that a company in charge of a monopolistic gaming platform does something at its own expense that is in the best interest of the gamer. Now I’m not saying that Microsoft is doing this out of the goodness of their hearts; there’s definitely a long game here, and under Sod’s law, Microsoft would be announcing a Netflix-esque 50% price hike to Game Pass shortly after this article that would drive players away en masse. But for now, after years of really good strides that have reshaped the industry on their terms, it must be said that Microsoft has “done right.”
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