Category Archives: Commentary
Self-Correcting
I feel there are many elements about AI that will eventually be self-correcting… in a sort of apocalyptic, crash-and-burn kind of way. For example, the AI-summarized web doesn’t leave much economic oxygen for people to create content worth summarizing. Assuming, of course, that ad-based revenue streams continue to make sense at all as we cross into over 50% of all internet traffic being bots.
On an individual level, I am experiencing some interesting changes that may also be self-correcting.
I have mentioned it a few times, but I have had a problem with watching Youtube (Shorts). As in, I would pop on over to quickly decompress from some other activity, and then 2-3 hours later, awaken from my fugue, algorithmic state having not accomplished anything that I had set out to. It’s a problem.
…or, at least, it was. Because I am now beginning to encounter (presumed) AI-directed, curated, and/or created content. And it repulses me in an uncanny valley way. Takes me right out of whatever hypnosis I was under and immediately causes me to close the tab. Which, of course, is great for me.
I put “presumed” up there though, because sometimes I cannot really tell. For example, this video about “15 forgotten garden traditions” is probably AI generated – it features generic voiceover on top of stitched-together montage of others peoples’ (at least attributed) content. Much like the now-maligned em dash however, perhaps that style of video is now just guilty by association? Another video was on The Saver’s Paradox and my AI-dar went off immediately. Looking further into the channel and thinking about what it would require to prompt that level of video though, it seems like it’s legit.
Perhaps neither of those videos bothered you in the slightest. In which case, congratulations! You are absolutely set up for a future filled to the brim with… content. For me though, the magic is gone.
It may well be inevitable that the quality of AI generation is such that it become indistinguishable from human content. In which case, why would I be on Youtube at all, instead of in my own prompt?
Self-correcting! As it turns out, even black holes evaporate eventually.
Old Man’s Sky
They just keep bringing me back, don’t they?
If you haven’t heard the news, No Man’s Sky (NMS) recently released yet another massive free update to the game. This time around, you can build a corvette-class ship that will allow you to… get up and walk around in your ship. That might not sound like much, but it is actually kind of rare even in space games, especially considering you do so with no loading screens. In any case, I decided I need to give things another go after 5 (five!) years.
What I encountered was still one of the worst opening sequences for almost any game.
I apparently have never commented on it before, but NMS starts with you awakening on an alien planet, your suit powering up, and then a number of warnings about your environmental protection waning. Conceptually, this is fine; other survival games start you out in imminent danger too. For example, ARK has you awakening on a beach and sometimes being eaten by a raptor right away. In NMS’s case though, it just feels… bad. Your visor scanner doesn’t work, sometimes you don’t spawn near required resources to refill your environmental protection, and you don’t have the terrain modification gun yet which otherwise trivializes most hostile weather (e.g. dig a tunnel and get underground).
Worse, I actually tried starting things back up by immediately choosing an Expedition. Big mistake. Expeditions were added to the game several patches ago, and they are basically more focused experiences where you start out on predefined planets and need to accomplish specific goals. The problem is that these are absolutely tuned more for advanced players with a good grasp of the underlying mechanics. Well, and the other problem is that everyone is thrown into the same subsets of planets, so you might spawn in an area where everyone has mined most of the nearby ore. More annoyingly to me though, is that when you are looking around for resources, you’re bombarded with dozens of (useless) player base icons, making finding things difficult.
So, yeah, don’t do what I did. Instead, get a foothold in the game and then go into an Expedition – including bringing some good loot in with you! – via a vendor you unlock a few hours in the game.
In any case, since I hate myself, I chose to start a brand new save on Survival difficulty. C’mon, I had 130+ hours logged already, right? Beginning is brutal, as mentioned, and you have to contend with some extra nonsense like smaller stack sizes for material, etc. Within about 15 hours though, I’m back to having 22 million units, 6000 nanites, and unlocking all 10 freighter storage racks.
No Man’s Sky has indeed improved tremendously over the years, but fundamentally it does still have a problem with “but… why?” It’s the same place I landed on five years ago, and unfortunately it does not appear much has changed. Well, OK, there have been a lot of changes. Expeditions, there are now Dissonant planets with corrupted Sentinels, there is a Settlement system, Pirate Dreadnaughts to fight/own, the new bespoke Corvette-class ship building system, and so on.
Fundamentally, though? When you’re on foot, none of the randomly-generated creatures matter; only Sentinels pose any threat whatsoever, and there are only like a half-dozen types. Why even have so many different kinds of weapons for your multi-tool if only one is needed to take down every enemy? Meanwhile, if you spend more than 30 seconds in space, you’re likely to be accosted by fleets of hostile pirates that will absolutely murder you if given half a chance. The space gameplay “loop” is not particularly deep, but nevertheless feels miles more complete than what you are doing in the other 80% of the game, e.g. walking on planets.
Having said all that… yeah, 130+ hours plus however many I muster this time around. I’m harsh on the game because I’m mad. Hello Games have added so much and just inexplicably left such a gaping hole in the center and I don’t understand why. Maybe having Gek pirates running around on foot blasting you would feel too weird or whatever, but apparently it’s fine when they’re faceless ships? OK, just use some of the six trillion randomized alien creatures and make some of them require that fancy mech to fight! Or lean more into those bug aliens that are apparently as ubiquitous as the Sentinels for (presumably) some kind of lore reason.
Or, I guess, ignore all that and hurry up and give me Light No Fire.
Following the Money
Found a news article (via Reddit) with a refreshingly straight-forward headline: Newzoo: North American gamers spend an average of $325 annually The Reddit conversation focused mostly on how inexpensive gaming is as a hobby in dollars-per-hour terms, compared to going to a bar/movie ($20-$80) or even a concert/sporting event ($150-$800+). You know, traditional talking points.
After actually reading the article itself though, that wasn’t what this report is about:
The motivations behind player spending in these regions also differ. 34% of North American players spend money to unlock exclusive content, while 29% do so on personalisation/character customization. […]
The report also found that there’s diversity in player spending patterns between regions. In North America, 27% of players invest in content packs, power-ups, and in-game currencies, 24% buy subscriptions, and 23% purchase battle passes.
What’s conspicuously missing is “percentage spent buying the game.” At least, I assume unlocking exclusive content does not count. And actually, all those percentages are kind of weird. Is character customization not also exclusive content? Are content packs not battle passes? Who knows.
Regardless, the through line is clear:
According to the findings, the West games market is seeing slowing “payer growth,” with a 1.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in North America and 3.1% CAGR in Europe between 2023 and 2027. As such, Newzoo and Tebex recommend studios “shift from acquiring new players to maximizing value from existing ones.”
There’s a tangled web of chicken vs egg speculation about why player growth has slowed. Market saturation? Higher prices and too much “maximizing value” squeezing people out? Shaky economic future? The rise of lifestyle/live-service/forever games like Fortnite, Roblox, etc? (Time) Competition from short-form video content?
Funnily enough, most of these points were covered back in January in the Hopes of the Game Industry. And the answer is… Yes. All of those things, simultaneously. There have been tremendous layoffs in the games industry this year, including high-profile sequels and nearly-complete games thrown in the trash. We mourn the loss of what could have been, but the suits see how only ~12% of gaming hours are spent playing new games. Why risk $100m+ and eight years building a game when you can “maximize value” out of established ones? And if you don’t have any of those games, just buy’em up.
Again, it could be an interesting debate about which happened first. Did escalating prices for new games send players back into the arms of familiar classics? Or did the introduction of microtransactions start making games stickier, as a means of assuaging sunk costs?
True answers, if any exist, are academic at this point. Developers are following the money and it’s hard to blame them. Well, aside from being increasingly incapable of making fun games even after 4-8 years and tens millions of dollars and are now choosing to erode your consumer surplus instead.
You can certainly blame them for that.
Continue Reading
In the spirit of Blaugust, allow me to give an unsolicited opinion: excerpts suck. If I see a post in my Feedly roll that is just a paragraph that ends with Continue Reading… I don’t. That blog gets dropped.
There’s really only two reasons to have excerpts on: you don’t know better, or you do. In the latter case, congrats on being a cog in the giant SEO/clickbait bullshit machine. Be better, if you can.
In case you’re a member of the former category though, for WordPress check Settings > Reading:
Are there legitimate concerns about having your blog content displayed in an RSS aggregator versus readers coming directly to your blog? Maybe. I have no idea if someone reading this post on Feedly will have their View register on my WordPress stats or whatever. I could also see concerns about post formatting if you care about that sort of thing. For example, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to avoid orphan words in the blog proper. Seriously, check my posts sometimes (engagement!). None of which matters for Feedly readers though, because those line lengths are all over the place.
You might think me arrogant for suggesting that losing my subscription to your blog is a reason to turn off excerpts. I would instead suggest that forcing readers to open a new tab just for you is itself the height of arrogance. Do you yourself open tabs for every blog you follow every day, like it’s 2005? No.
Turn off your excerpts. Thanks for reading.
AI Won’t Save Us from Ourselves
I came across a survey/experiment article the other day entitled The Hidden Penalty of Using AI at Work. The “penalty” in this case being engineers more harshly judging a peer’s code if they were told the peer used AI to help write it. The overall effect is one’s competence being judged 9% worse than when the reviewer is told no AI was used. At least the penalty was applied equally…
The competence penalty was more than twice as severe for female engineers, who faced a 13% reduction compared to 6% for male engineers. When reviewers thought a woman had used AI to write code, they questioned her fundamental abilities far more than when reviewing the same AI-assisted code from a man.
Most revealing was who imposed these penalties. Engineers who hadn’t adopted AI themselves were the harshest critics. Male non-adopters were particularly severe when evaluating female engineers who used AI, penalizing them 26% more harshly than they penalized male engineers for identical AI usage.
Welp, that’s pretty bad. Indeed one of the conclusions is:
The competence penalty also exacerbates existing workplace inequalities. It’s reasonable and perhaps tempting to assume that AI tools should level the playing field by augmenting everyone’s capabilities. Our results suggest that this is not guaranteed and in fact the opposite could be true. In our context, which is dominated by young males, making AI equally available increased bias against female engineers.
This is the sort of thing I will never understand about AI Optimists: why would you presuppose anything other than an entrenchment of the existing capitalist dystopian hellscape and cultural morass?
I don’t know if you have taken a moment to look around lately, but we are clearly in the Bad Place. If I had once held a hope that AI tools would accelerate breakthroughs in fusion technology and thus perhaps help us out of the climate apocalypse we are sleepwalking into, articles like the above serve to ground me in the muck where we are. Assuming AI doesn’t outright end humanity, it certainly isn’t going to save us from ourselves. Do you imagine the same administration that is trying to cancel solar/wind energy and destroy NASA satellites monitoring CO2 is going to shepherd in a new age of equitable prosperity?
Or is it infinitely more likely the gains will be privatized and consolidated into the techno-feudal city-states these tech bros are already dreaming up? Sorta like Ready Player One, minus the escapism VR.
I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. We are absolutely in a transition period with AI, and as the survey pointed out, the non-adopters were more harsh than those familiar with AI. But… the undercurrent remains. I do not see what AI is going to do to solve income inequality, racism, sexism, or the literal death cult currently wielding all levers of government. I’m finding it a bit more likely that AI will be used to, you know, oppress people in horrible new ways. Or just the old ways, much more efficiently.
Wherever technology goes, there we are.
Switch On
I have been waffling on whether to get the Switch 2 or a regular Switch or nothing at all for quite some time. To a certain extent, the question itself was silly – if you weren’t going to get a console after seven years of its life, you clearly weren’t all that interested, yeah? Just let it go. And I was doing just that.
Then, my son was meeting some new friends and they asked if he played Minecraft.
*cue MGS guard exclamation mark sound*
To be clear, my son hasn’t actually played Minecraft… or any formal videogames at all. There’s been some “educational” apps and the Nex Playground sort of things, but nothing what I would consider serious. Indeed, I had actually been waiting since his conception for a time when he would be ready to ascend to the P2 position (or technically P3). So, sensing some weakness in my somewhat-crunchy wife’s protective shell, I decided to turn up the heat.*
The funny thing is, I didn’t know how my son would play Minecraft. I bought it ages ago on PC but there’s no way he’s going to play it there. Of course, Minecraft has been ported to literally everything, so we’re technically spoiled for choice. But how could we play it together? Sure, there are probably some workarounds like cross-play from a tablet to the PC or phone to tablet. Or, you know, a game console.
So, yeah, this past Prime Day I bought an OLED Switch.
As pictured, it was a new OLED Switch with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for $275 from Woot. I legitimately thought about trying to do some legwork and find a Switch 2 bundle someplace despite it costing double – you know, for future-proofing – but on the whole this “experiment” seemed safer anyway with a 6-year old. Besides, I had sorta regretted not getting a retro handheld with an analog stick and, well, here one is. Playing N64 games would require a subscription, but ehhhh it’s probably fine.
The funny/sad thing is that, at the same time as all the other frantic research being done before the end of the Woot sale, I actually got around to figuring out and executing on Switch emulation on my PC. So… maybe I didn’t need to be buying anything, really. Still, overall I feel like a legit Switch would be a good family-room style option to have. If it doesn’t work out in a couple of years, hey, Nintendo gear does appear to retain a lot of its value based on my eBay searching.
[Fake Edit] I’m going a little bit overboard, I think. Purchased the following:
- Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild [$45 via Costco voucher]
- Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom [$45 voucher trick above]
- Super Mario Bros Wonder [$38 eBay]
- Super Mario Party Jamboree [$45 Woot]
- Super Smash Bros Ultimate [$44 Woot]
- Super Mario Bros Odyssey [$40 Walmart]
That’s… a lot. Aside from the two Zelda games though, everything else are physical cartridges. I technically would have preferred digital games – who really cares for possibly losing cartridges around the house? – but the thought process is that physical games would retain some amount of resell value into the future. I’m positive that any of those Mario games would sell instantly on eBay for $30, for example. Will they continue to do so 5 years into the future or whatever? We shall see.
Something something, treat yo self.
…oh, and I’ll probably need Minecraft at some point too.
* I talked everything over with my wife beforehand, of course. Give me some credit.
AIrtists
There’s some fresh Blizzard drama over a Diablo Immortal + Hearthstone colab artwork:
The top comment (1700+ upvotes) is currently:
Guess $158 pets aren’t enough to pay an artist to draw the image for their colab lmao.
I’m all for piling onto Blizzard at this moment, precisely because what they are currently doing in, for example, Hearthstone is especially egregious. It’s not just the pets, though. The dev team had been advocating for reducing the power level of sets for a while – ostensively to fight power creep – but after like the third flop set in a row, their efforts are beginning to become indistinguishable from incompetence. The Starcraft miniset has been nerfed like 2-3 times now, but people are still playing cards from there because they’re more powerful than the crap we got today. First week of the expansion, and the updated Quest decks all had winrates of less than 30%.
Having said that, it isn’t all that clear that the AI artwork is actually Blizzard’s fault.
Last year, there was another AI art controversy with Hearthstone regarding the pixel hero portraits. While there was no official announcement, all signs pointed towards the artist themselves being the one to submit the AI-generated product rather than Blizzard actively “commissioning” such a thing. And remember, even the small indie devs from Project Zomboid got burned when they hired the same person that made their original splash screen and said artist turned around to submit AI-smeared work.
This sort of thing used to sound insane to me. Why would an artist use a tool that specifically rips off artists and makes their very own future work less valuable? Is there no sense of self-preservation?
On the other hand, that Hearthstone hero portrait “artist” almost got paid if it weren’t for those pesky Reddit kids. Considering that Microsoft is now requiring its employees to use AI in their jobs, perhaps the artists were just ahead of the curve. In my own meatspace job, AI tools are being made available and training being required if only to styme certain employees from blindly pasting sensitive, personal data into ChatGPT or Grammarly. Because of course they do.
Regardless, I am interested in seeing how it goes down and what eventually wins. AI does, obviously. But do people stop caring about AI-generated product art because so many examples eventually flood the zone that it becomes impossible to keep up? Will it be a simple generational change, with Gen Alpha (etc) being OK with it? Or will AI advance enough that we can no longer spot the little mistakes?
All three are going to happen, but I wonder which will happen first.
Human Slurry
Scrolling on my phone, I clicked into and read an article about Yaupon, which is apparently North America’s only native caffeinated plant. Since we’re speed-running the apocalypse over here in the US, the thought is that high tariffs on coffee and tea might revitalize an otherwise ultra-niche “Made in America” product. Huh, interesting.
I scroll down to the end and then see this:
I’ve seen summarized reviews on Amazon, but never comments. Honestly, I just laughed.
It’s long been known that the comments on news articles are trash: filled with bots or humans indistinguishable from bots. But there is something deeply… I don’t know a strong enough word for it. Cynical? Nihilistic? Absurd? Maybe just fucking comedic about inviting your (presumably) human readers to comment on a story and then just blending them all up in a great human slurry summary so no one has to actually read any of them. At what point do you not just cut out the middle(hu)man?
If want a summary of the future, that’s it. Wirehead, but made out of people.
Teanautica
Do you enjoy some gaming drama? What am I asking, who doesn’t? Pull up a chair and let’s spill it.
First, set the stage. Subnautica was a much-beloved underwater indie breakout hit created by Unknown Worlds. The follow-up semi-sequel, Below Zero… not so much. Nevertheless, the actual sequel Subnautica 2 is the second-most wishlisted game on Steam, trailing Hollow Knight: Silksong. Krafton buys Unknown Worlds in 2021. Subnautica 2 was revealed to be in development since April 2022, had a cinematic video released October 2024, and reports it would have an Early Access release sometime in 2025. In April of this year, there was even a few gameplay trailers.
And then a shoe dropped: Krafton, the company that purchased Unknown Worlds for $500m had fired the entire executive leadership, and delayed the game until 2026. Why? “It wasn’t ready.”
Charlie Cleveland, now-former head of Unknown Worlds, said it was ready for Early Access. Which, okay, just a leadership spat, right? But then came the juice: a Bloomberg report that highlighted special “earn-in” terms of the Unknown Worlds buyout. Specifically, if Unknown Worlds was able to meet certain sales targets by the end of 2025, they would get a $250m bonus. All of a sudden, it became obvious that Krafton sacked the leadership team and delayed Subnautica 2 just to avoid the payout.
…or was it?
Krafton resurfaced to hang all the dirty laundry out to dry:
[…] Specifically, in addition to the initial $500 million purchase price, we allocated approximately 90% of the up to $250 million earn-out compensation to the three former executives, with the expectation that they would demonstrate leadership and active involvement in the development of Subnautica 2.
However, regrettably, the former leadership abandoned the responsibilities entrusted to them. Subnautica 2 was originally planned for an Early Access launch in early 2024, but the timeline has since been significantly delayed. KRAFTON made multiple requests to Charlie and Max to resume their roles as Game Director and Technical Director, respectively, but both declined to do so. In particular, following the failure of Moonbreaker, KRAFTON asked Charlie to devote himself to the development of Subnautica 2. However, instead of participating in the game development, he chose to focus on a personal film project.
KRAFTON believes that the absence of core leadership has resulted in repeated confusion in direction and significant delays in the overall project schedule. The current Early Access version also falls short in terms of content volume. We are deeply disappointed by the former leadership’s conduct, and above all, we feel a profound sense of betrayal by their failure to honor the trust placed in them by our fans.
Incidentally, there’s an additional paragraph down towards the end that says Krafton “reaffirm our commitment to provide the rewards [the remaining devs] were promised.” It remains to be seen whether that is indeed $25m, whether it is still dependent on the same targets, and so on. Now that everything is in the open, I think it will be harder for the working devs to be screwed, but we’ll see.
As you can imagine, Reddit and a lot of the internet is awash in hot takes. Most of which are bad.
“Krafton is clearly lying!” “Obvious corporate fuckery.” “They are just trying to get out from paying $250m.” “Krafton is using weasel words and won’t be paying the other devs money either.”
I sympathize with these notions. At least, I did until I found out that Charlie Cleveland really was taking the piss. Krafton’s statement of “chose to focus on a personal film project” comically undersells it:
That’s from Charlie’s website. Also from his website, in the About section:
I’m Charlie Cleveland and I’ve been designing video games for over 25 years. I founded Unknown Worlds and built games like Natural Selection, Natural Selection 2, Subnautica and Moonbreaker. I absolutely love making games but wanted to try something new.
At the end of 2023, I left San Francisco after almost 20 years and moved to Los Angeles to reset my life. Instead of taking it easy, I now find myself working on multiple film projects. It’s amazing how fast it’s all happening – being right in the thick of things makes it so much easier to meet like-minded people!
What else should have been taking place at the end of 2023? Maybe… working on your fucking game?
Don’t want to trust Krafton’s motives? Fine, don’t. But let’s not pretend ole Cleveland Steamer over here was doing anything other than quiet quitting and waiting for his cut of $225m off the backs of devs who were otherwise floundering.
The leaked presentation slides claim that between Q2 2023 and Q2 2025, Unknown Worlds removed two biomes, one Leviathan type, multiple creatures and tools, one vehicle (Trident), character customization features, the custom game mode, and six hours’ worth of story content. While many of those elements were merely delayed rather than completely cut, their omissions have scaled down the early access build significantly, “making it necessary to reassess the feasibility of the planned launch,” one of the leaked slides reads.
The three fired founders are suing, of course, so perhaps we’ll get more salacious details in discovery. Or maybe it will just be settled out of court. Whatever the case, what I do think is abundantly clear and not nearly communicated enough is this: the founders of Unknown Worlds very clearly fucked off and were waiting for a second paycheck they did not earn. Did Krafton suddenly fire them to prevent Subnautica 2 from entering (a premature) Early Access and thus likely getting enough revenue to trigger a $250m payout? Yeah. Clearly, yes. But was that wrong? No, clearly no.
Charlie elsewhere claims they always shared the profits and would have shared the $225m payout with the actual employees building Subnautica 2 and rah rah rah. That’s a cute sentiment, and I’d almost believe it if he hadn’t abandoned the team. “Subnautica has been my life’s work and I would never willingly abandon it or the amazing team that has poured their hearts into it.” So… were ya working on Subnautica 2 or were ya not, homeslice? Attended the meetings? Signed off on the ever-reducing Early Access scope? Got any receipts, my friend? Or just mad you’re in the Find Out phase?
I’m about as anti-corporate as it comes – feel free to read any of the 1500+ posts from over a decade to confirm. But what I have realized time and time again, is two things:
- M. Night Shymalan
- The corporate call is coming from inside the corporate house
Don’t take Charlie’s side just because you really liked Subnautica. It’s a beautiful flower in a sea of shit and should be celebrated. The same dev team went on to make Below Zero, and Charlie fucked off to make Moonbreaker. They are not gods, they are not heroes, and chances are none of them have any idea how or why the games they made were any good in the first place. Some games are simply products of their time and would have not have been as successful had they come earlier or later. If they really had the secret sauce, every game would be better than the last. And that is rare.
Also, after you get bought out for $500m with another $250m queued up in a couple of years, if you cared maybe you can sit your ass behind a desk for a minute to ensure your team gets the cut. Or, you know… don’t, and then quit out of principle and go make your AI-seeded Christmas movie. Pick a lane.
Anyway, little ranty at the end there, but it’s Drama with the capital D. You’re welcome.
In An Age 
Price Hike
Oct 16
Posted by Azuriel
You have likely heard the news already, but in the last few weeks Microsoft has increased the price of Game Pass, kind of significantly. The Ultimate tier went from $19.99 to $29.99, for example, which is a 50% increase. Even the PC tier where I’m at went from $11.99 to $16.49, which is a 38% increase. While Microsoft has tried spinning the “value added” from things like free battlepasses to a few F2P games, most everything is the same or worse.
I have a couple of things I wanted to say about this.
First, the amount of “I told you so!”s from people – including former FTC chair Lina Khan – who suggest the price increase is a result of the Activision Blizzard merger is kind of ridiculous. Yes, $55 billion is a lot of investment money that Microsoft expects a return on. However… do we imagine the Game Pass subscription was going to stay at the same level if the merger didn’t occur? Was Microsoft not going to lay off the same game devs as before? Subscriptions go up and to the right. It doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict that Netflix and Disney+ will have a(nother) price increase within the next two years, with or without any mergers.
Incidentally, the math on people canceling their subscriptions is interesting. Even if just under one-third of people cancelled their subscription… Microsoft would still break even. Hell, depending on the network traffic and other server costs, Microsoft probably comes out ahead even if half of everyone quits.
For the record, I’m not here to defend the price hikes or Microsoft in general. We are absolutely seeing an across-the-board decrease in Consumer Surplus as a result of this, and it behooves everyone to double-check their internal math to see if Game Pass still makes sense. If all you’re playing is Hollow Knight: Silksong for the month, well, you were better off just buying it outright. Even the “free” copy of Call of Duty is going to start costing you extra starting in month 3 versus 7+ now.
But let’s not pretend that where we’re at today wasn’t worth how we got here. Microsoft was going to Microsoft anyway. The fact that we got to enjoy a comparatively cheap way to play videogames for years and years was phenomenal. The party is over now? Oh no, back to… buying videogames again.
Compare that to what’s going to happen when the AI music inevitably stops.
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Tags: Consumer Surplus, Inevitable, Microsoft, Price Hike, Xbox Game Pass