{"id":3685,"date":"2021-10-04T22:00:54","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T13:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/?p=3685"},"modified":"2021-09-27T16:14:36","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T07:14:36","slug":"im-late-to-the-xbox-game-pass-party-but-im-happy-to-be-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/04\/im-late-to-the-xbox-game-pass-party-but-im-happy-to-be-here\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m Late to the Xbox Game Pass Party, But I\u2019m Happy to be Here"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despite owning an Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One, I wouldn\u2019t by any means consider myself an Xbox gamer. For the past 20 years, if a game could be played on PlayStation or PC, I\u2019d play it there. If it weren\u2019t for the exclusives\u2014and the fact that I got both my 360 and Xbox One for a hundred bucks each\u2014I\u2019d probably never have touched an Xbox in the past decade.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Halo Infinite Story Trailer | Xbox + Bethesda E3 2021\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JNhrhYRRUO8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>However, a few weeks back, I saw the <em>Halo Infinite <\/em>story preview trailer. This reminded me that while I had played every main series <em>Halo<\/em> game\u2014including <em>ODST<\/em> and <em>Reach<\/em>\u2014I had never played <em>Halo 5: Guardians<\/em>. So I set about rectifying that. After a quick online search, I discovered that even though every other <em>Halo<\/em> game had been eventually released on PC, <em>Halo 5<\/em> was still an Xbox exclusive. I looked at buying the game used as well as buying it on the Xbox store but wasn\u2019t sure I wanted to spend $20 on it. Then I remembered that Xbox Game Pass exists.<\/p>\n<p>Now to be clear, up until this point, I really didn\u2019t know what Xbox Game Pass was. I never really paid too much attention when I heard people talking about it. I just passively assumed that it was the same as PlayStation Now\u2014like that for a fixed monthly fee you could stream older games to your Xbox.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Available Now with Xbox Game Pass | Fall 2021\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XtabisblTDg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So I looked it up and found out how wrong I was. It\u2019s more like PlayStation Plus than PlayStation now\u2014only instead of 2 free games to download a month, there were dozens of games to download with new ones being added (and older ones being taken away) monthly. But the good news was that it had <em>Halo 5<\/em> on it and the first month was $1.<\/p>\n<p>It was only after I finished <em>Halo 5<\/em> a few days later I realized just how awesome Xbox Game Pass was. Basically, the vast majority of games on the service can be played on PC\u2014and my PC is far better than a launch model Xbox One at this point. But more than that, the new games of the service were legitimately blockbuster titles.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Psychonauts- Now Available with Xbox Game Pass\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iYIiwpGUpYc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Using Xbox Game Pass this past month has been an odd experience. After <em>Halo 5<\/em>, I went onto <em>Psychonauts 2<\/em>. And a week later when I finished it, I genuinely felt bad for not purchasing the game\u2014I felt guilty as if I had pirated it.<\/p>\n<p>For the next game, I picked up the <em>The Ascent<\/em>. While it\u2019s a fun enough game, I\u2019ve quickly come to realize that I\u2019d want to play it coop with my friends and not alone. Now normally. When I buy a game, I beat it\u2014as giving up half way through would mean that I\u2019d wasted my money. But with Xbox Game Pass, I\u2019d spent only a single dollar.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Ascent | Xbox Game Pass Trailer\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eQ2zUMFO6mE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This felt so alien to me and soon I figured out why that was. I\u2019ve spent the last 15 years in Japan\u2014a country where game rental is illegal. For all that time, I had to buy a game to play it (hence, why I still buy games on disk if I can\u2014so that I can sell them later and recoup some cash). Being able to try out games and drop them if I\u2019m not having fun with zero guilt is surprisingly liberating.<\/p>\n<p>So while I had only intended to use the Xbox Game Pass for a single game, the service has absolutely won me over. In one month, I\u2019ve saved literally $110. Moreover, it has a ton of indy titles on it that have been cluttering my Steam wishlist for months\u2014games I want to play but haven\u2019t been sure I want to buy. Now, I can try them out as I please. In the end, while I\u2019m currently boxing up my Xbox One to put it back in storage, it looks like I\u2019ll be an Xbox gamer for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/04\/im-late-to-the-xbox-game-pass-party-but-im-happy-to-be-here\/\">Click to Read<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">I\u2019m Late to the Xbox Game Pass Party, But I\u2019m Happy to be Here<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[303],"class_list":["post-3685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-xbox","excerpt","zoom","full-without-featured","even","excerpt-0"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biggestinjapan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/gp.jpg?fit=800%2C428&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3686,"href":"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3685\/revisions\/3686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biggestinjapan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}