r/technology • u/heeroo0 • Sep 04 '26
Software Microsoft Announces Big Changes to Xbox Cloud Gaming, Switches to Monthly Hour Limits
https://www.ign.com/articles/microsoft-announces-big-changes-to-xbox-cloud-gaming-switches-to-monthly-hour-limits1.1k
u/HAHAHA0kay Sep 04 '26
5 hours a month is insane. I play 5 hours in 3 hours.
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u/TrivTheRenegade Sep 04 '26
When I was your age, I played 5 hours in 2 hours.
Damn kids don't know how easy they have it these days.
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u/Hungry_Shake6943 Sep 04 '26
Couldn't let Sony have all the villain aura this month, could you ya schmucks?
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u/SkeyFG Sep 04 '26
Yeah, man... At the end of the day, they are all the same picture... Microsoft, Sony, nVidia
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u/KingMario05 Sep 04 '26
...Nintendo?
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u/nox66 Sep 04 '26
Emulator wars, gameplay patents, and the Switch 2 key card was a step in this direction.
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u/rcanhestro Sep 04 '26
tbf, it makes sense to do it now.
Sony is in the middle of a massive backlash right now.
this is "peanuts" compared to that.
they are hoping to bury this news behind that.
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u/Penguinkeith Sep 04 '26
I can’t fucking believe in the year of our lord 2026 Microsoft is bringing back phone minutes but for gaming. Like are they intentionally trying to kill their last golden goose in game pass?
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u/Roger_The_Cat_ Sep 04 '26
Next up is roaming charges for using a wireless controller
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u/LtFluffybear Sep 04 '26
game pass was never a golden goose, it was always an albatross.
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u/ThanatosIdle Sep 04 '26
Gamepass was a white goose painted gold, and now the goose has lead poisoning from the paint.
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u/captnconnman Sep 04 '26
“Oh, NVIDIA technically only gives you 100hrs/mo of priority bandwidth with GeForce NOW Ultimate, I wonder what the limi-DEAR LORD. 15hrs/mo PERIOD???”
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u/TheRoyalBrook Sep 04 '26
Genuinely the fact its 5 hours for the low plan, and 15 for the high is insulting lol. Like anyone who pays for it for streaming (which I imagine do exist tbh. Its what it was marketed for as a way to play xbox games without owning one) are now basically paying 20 a month to play maybe one or two saturdays.
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u/retard_seasoning Sep 04 '26
Is it 5 hours a day or a month? 5 hours a month doesn't make any sense.
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u/TheRoyalBrook Sep 04 '26
5 hours a month, and 15 for the high plan. Its why everyone's calling it ridiculous.
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u/27Rench27 Sep 04 '26
I suspect we’re a little bit past people using nice words like “ridiculous” lol
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u/DuntadaMan Sep 04 '26
Entirely intentional, then they will expend it out with a "reasonable" price and everyone won't notice they are being fucking charged for playing their own fucking games.
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u/Mike_Kermin Sep 04 '26
I just started playing Ark because it was on sale.
Steam says I've played 4.2 hours.
... That was yesterday lol.
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u/Unfortunate_Comedian Sep 04 '26
I did use it for the streaming mainly. I never got around to getting a current gen console but I do have a gaming PC and laptop.
So I have gamepass and will use the cloud gaming to play the console versions of games (it really mattered when I was an admin for a console DayZ server). But I haven’t used it much lately tbh.
But now? Oh they can fuck all the way off. I’ll just start moving my PC library over to GOG. Which lets me download offline installers. These companies can get fucked.
No more PC gamepass for me it looks like.
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u/Sabin10v2 Sep 04 '26
Like anyone who pays for it for streaming
That would be the 4% of users that this will affect. I'd bet they make up almost 100% of all the users that actually use game streaming.
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u/bakagir Sep 04 '26
Base is 5 lmao
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u/Pepparkakan Sep 04 '26
I bet they’re doing that thing where they give us these totally unreasonable numbers so they can later announce “oh shit sorry our bad, you know what, we’ve decided out of the goodness of our hearts to give you guys 15 at the lowest plan and 45 at the highest, for no extra charge, aren’t we great!”, and suddenly look like heroes instead even though its all the same “you will own nothing” bullshit…
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u/DebentureThyme Sep 04 '26
Watch NVIDIA change that.
Cloud Gaming isn't their priority, and converting existing data centers to AI projects would allow them to add more AI capacity without needing to build as many new locations.
No one's talking about the elephant in the room about how cloud gaming was not becoming profitable, only more expensive, and maybe they should turn and point at that as "Hey, are we just doing this same shit again but with a different coat of failure?" before investing more in AI.
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u/bakagir Sep 04 '26
Hey John what’s a normal amount of hours a month people use their Xbox for?
Uh idk like 5 I guess?
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u/borkyborkus Sep 04 '26
Whatever the number is, it’s all but guaranteed to be pushed lower and lower every year.
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u/adpoop Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26
Well how else are they supposed to sell the higher hour tiers? I give it till the end of 2027 before they come out with an unlimited hour plan.
Edit: just read the article. It's actually 5 fucking hours 😂 hope microslop and sony enjoy the beds they've made for themselves
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u/Skyrider11 Sep 04 '26
And they claim that this will only affect 4% of Game Pass users. That 4% of game pass users use their subscription less than 5 hours per month feels like impossible, right? Even less than 15 which is the max tier is surprisingly little
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u/Sabin10v2 Sep 04 '26
That 4% of game pass users use their subscription less than 5 hours per month feels like impossible, right?
For game streaming specifically, that number doesn't seem too far fetched. I don't want game streaming, I want to run stuff locally for a better experience and everyone I know feels the same way.
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u/adpoop Sep 04 '26
Idek what the point of them saying 4% was, let alone that it's a real number. "We're only screwing over a few people so you shouldn't care" is a wild defense lmao. I imagine they're saying 4% of game pass users use cloud gaming and that's who it's effecting¿ The service isn't making as much money as they advertised to share holders so they take the in app purchase route to sell more hearts when you run out¿
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u/ParticularHistoryo Sep 04 '26
This is for streaming games. Most people download them as there is input lag playing through the cloud. Only 4% of subscribers stream games through the cloud more than 5 hours per month?
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u/Joshopolis Sep 04 '26
no fucking shot.. surely no one is dumb enough to go for this
- Game Pass Ultimate: 15 hours
- Game Pass Premium: 10 hours
- Game Pass Essential: 5 hours
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u/SportsBallScholar Sep 04 '26
Yes but that does not tell the whole story. They will also raise the price!
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u/Skyfier42 Sep 04 '26
$10 a month for 5 hours of cloud gaming is insane. The only people willing to pay for unlimited game streaming are the hardcore gamers, who they just turned off from ever paying for this. These people don't understand their core audience.
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u/_steve_rogers_ Sep 04 '26
It really is true, every time PlayStation shoots itself in the foot, Xbox shoots itself in the head.
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u/Westcroft Sep 04 '26
Sucks for people who assumed they’d be able to use their devices the way they were sold on
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u/Jubez187 Sep 04 '26
Yeah there’s a lot of people on the PlayStation portal subreddit that only own the portal and pay the subscription for Sonys cloud streaming…if Sony follows suits those dudes are beat.
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u/JoviAMP Sep 04 '26
If, or when?
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u/Messgrey Sep 04 '26
When, definitely when.
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u/KingMario05 Sep 04 '26
Given their recent track record? Almost definitely when.
Christ, SIE needs to put Layden back in charge. Hulst and the Japanese dude are driving the damn thing off a cliff. And it's where Sony makes the big bucks... if it goes under, so does Sony.
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u/grubas Sep 04 '26
Sonys busy trying to argue that every digital game is a licence buy in court.
They are 100% looking to say you can only buy a game for a year and then you need to pay more.
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u/nox66 Sep 04 '26
I realize Sony has always been at least a little shitty, but from this, to Crunchyroll, to selling off Bravia, Sony seems determined to take functioning business units and set them on fire.
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u/johnsciarrino Sep 04 '26
This doesn’t count if you’re using a console as a base though, right? Like a portal connected to a PS5 for remote play doesn’t use the cloud the same way an ally x wouldn’t either? Right? Right?!?
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u/chynkeyez Sep 04 '26
This is me. Dad of 2 kids. Huge portal user. Only way I can play grown up games. Also is super cool to cloud stream a game while the kiddo logs onto the ps5 proper and run multiplayer. Guess I better get while the getting is good
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u/fathertitojones Sep 04 '26
I just bought an old xbox with games that I can play multiplayer and campaigns on locally. I don't play all that often but I want to be able to own my own things and play how/when I want to. Been a blast reliving firefights on Reach and ODST with friends in the house.
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Sep 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/OneSeaworthiness7768 Sep 04 '26
What does that have to do with this change which has not yet gone into effect?
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u/Honest-Resist-7676 Sep 04 '26
They are reinforcing that: with cloud gaming, the user is subject to the whims and wishes of the ones holding the hardware (or the Internet connection). As was apparent to this individual when their buddy's game disconnected mid-game.
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u/_steve_rogers_ Sep 04 '26
It really is true, every time PlayStation shoots itself in the foot, Xbox shoots itself in the head.
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u/chambee Sep 04 '26
You can reduce de bandwidth of money you give them to zero.
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u/janosaudron Sep 04 '26
something tells me that is their intention so they can dedicate all their computational real state to AI
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u/Martel732 Sep 04 '26
So far the promise of AI is:
Fewer jobs, more expensive electricity, misinformation, sexualized images of people including minors, a bubble that is likely to hurt the whole economy, mass surveillance and restrictions on how you can spend your free time.
And tech bros can't figure out why people are opposed.
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u/ElementalWeapon Sep 04 '26
Are these fools for real??? These limits are fucking laughable
Game Pass Ultimate: 15 hours
Game Pass Premium: 10 hours
Game Pass Essential: 5 hours
Then you have to BUY more time if you want to play beyond these pathetic limits?
Hopefully these idiots reverse course when people cancel en masse.
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u/Audioworm Sep 04 '26
I saw the headline and thought it was just the beginning of enshittification, but 15 hours a month for the top tier pass is a shockingly small amount. I am someone who isn't playing games games everyday, but could exceed 15 hours in a month with a few longer sessions throughout a month.
I will admit I am not familiar enough with Xbox's ecosystem (I have never owned an Xbox) to know exactly which stuff is behind cloud gaming and which is part of the pass, and so on, but this feels like a complete slamming of the door on cloud gaming.
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u/DoesntMatterEh Sep 04 '26
"everything is going to get simultaneously worse and more expensive and there's nothing you can do about it, fuck you pay me"
-every company in the United States
Edit: FIVE HOURS????? 😂😂😂 It really is fuck you pay me huh
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u/SaviorSixtySix Sep 04 '26
really hope this ai bubble pops
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u/FNALSOLUTION1 Sep 04 '26
Nope, only going to get worse.
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u/ohyouretough Sep 04 '26
It’ll pop. But we the people will subsidize it so the rich don’t lose out. It’ll be like 2008
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u/chambee Sep 04 '26
Exactly. The end of civilization is not going to get better.
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u/anormalgeek Sep 04 '26
No way. The rate the data centers are being built makes zero sense. There are too many competitors right now all trying to do the same thing. Everyone is sizing as if they're going to be the only ones left standing.
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u/DebentureThyme Sep 04 '26
Yes, that's why they all pushed forward in the last few years instead of waiting for more hardware and model advancements to make the prices make more sense for investing.
No, instead they pay multiple times over the old rate for hardware that they're going to burn through because... They all want to be the monopoly.
They're gambling it all now, costs be damned, because waiting for it to make sense would have also meant even more people could potential vie for market dominance. Doing it now has limited it to the people with the funds and willingness to burn obacene amounts of money on future hopes that they'll be the ones to corner the market.
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u/Exquisite-Load8654 Sep 04 '26
Don’t think the aftermath will be any better.
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u/He2oinMegazord Sep 04 '26
Like you arent excited for hockey/football armor and leather daddy apocalypse fits
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u/blockbuster_late_fee Sep 04 '26
“New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma wasn’t a longtime, hardcore gamer in the way Phil Spencer was. Her publicly visible Xbox history only began around January 2026, shortly before she became Xbox CEO. She acknowledged that she created the gamertag recently partly to learn and understand the gaming world”
15 hour a month top limit on gameplay is a move someone who doesn’t know game culture at all would do
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u/99999999999999999989 Sep 04 '26
Soooooo glad I cancelled my GamePass Ultimate after the last round of price increases. This is pathetic.
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u/photog_prince Sep 04 '26
SEGA and maybe Atari. Look, if you're going to do something now might be a good time to make a decently powerful box that plays video games and takes physical media.
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u/Competitive_Study232 Sep 04 '26
With what computer chips, memory and storage? Five year Tech like the Xbox and PS5 are almost $1000. You can thank AI for this.
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u/TheSauciestBoss Sep 04 '26
If it’s only gonna affect 4% of users then why change it all? You’re gonna squeeze that much more money out of the 4% to return a marginal profit? Go fuck yourself.
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u/crownpr1nce Sep 04 '26
If it only affects 4% of subscribers, that's because that part of the service is not working and not catching on. People are subscribing for the other perks. That's admitting it failed, and throwing in the towel early. Cause it won't get bigger with these tiny limits.
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u/gtck11 Sep 04 '26
As someone who primarily uses the cloud because I’m not buying a second Xbox and I don’t want to sit downstairs late at night and want to game in my cozy room, fuck this.
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u/Hecate100 Sep 04 '26
It sure looks like the entirety of the console market is in the midst of a murder/suicide.
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u/astirac Sep 04 '26
Good. This cloud gaming is the pathway to no one owning a PC or console, and all games requiring a subscription. The fewer people using them, the better.
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u/ArenjiTheLootGod Sep 04 '26
Microsoft is clearly shifting their Game Pass business model from one that seeks to grow user adoption rates towards one that seeks to extract as much profit as possible from its captive user base.
The inevitable enshittification is why I've been avoiding getting a Game Pass sub for years, anyone still subscibed should probably consider bailing because it's only going to get worse and/or more expensive from here.
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u/arrocknroll Sep 04 '26
I enjoyed game pass while I had it. I had a PC and a Series X for the living room that other people in the house I was living with at the time would use. It was really nice to have a catalogue of games as soon as I brought the system home from multiple generations that we could all sit and play.
That said, it was one of the easiest services I have ever quit. I knew the games I wanted to keep, bought them, and carried on. In four months of the $30 subscription after the price hike I was paying more for them anyway.
There is something to be said for ecosystems keeping customers captive but I think Microsoft and Sony seem to think its a lot harder to jump ship than it actually is.
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u/Im_Classy_AF Sep 04 '26
Been my take for years. Love to watch them shoot themselves in the foot
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u/alurimperium Sep 04 '26
The one benefit to it was being able to play console exclusives on PC. I used to have a Gamepass sub and would use it to play Skate 3 and MLB The Show and the NHL games.
With hours caps on that now, though, no way is any of this worth it
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u/a_talking_face Sep 04 '26
The pathway to nobody owning a PC or console is them being prohibitively expensive.
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u/Wind_Best_1440 Sep 04 '26
Wait this was actually a thing?
LOL, I thought this was a joke, whos going to buy 5 hours a month for gaming using cloud? LOL.
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u/not-sure-what-to-put Sep 04 '26
So we’re back to tokens in machines really but in our own home and on machines we paid for.
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u/jiggy_42 Sep 04 '26
The age of open source products, locally produced developments, a nd small business games are being accelerated due to these companies pushing their limits. They think consumers have no choice, but their greedy actions will get groupS of people to create gaming communities that dont rely on their bullshit.
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u/photog_prince Sep 04 '26
Sad because we all know eventually gaming companies won't sell hardware and will only sell cloud subscriptions. We're going to be truly fucked in a couple years. All so they can make another billion dollars.. wonderful
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u/Ak_Lonewolf Sep 04 '26
fuck that. I still have hundreds of older games I can play that still have 1000's of hours of mods to play. I can wait 10 years before buying new games.
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u/Kerlyle Sep 04 '26
Back to physical everything, fuck digital. Get into board gaming, MTG (with proxies), and hanging out with your friends. The only way out of the commodified digital future is to go and touch grass.
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u/Gilgamesh858 Sep 04 '26
I couldn't care less about these digital subscription services, they're a total scam. I canceled GeForce Now the second they slapped that 100-hour monthly cap on it and I built a rig anyway.
Honestly, if they keep stacking up all these restrictions and stop selling proper hardware, everyone's just going to move to PC. Paying for this humiliating crap makes zero sense.
And if that infection spreads to PC too? Well, I'll happily play my backlog of old games for the rest of my life.
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u/PM_ME_WEIRD_PETS Sep 04 '26
Once again Steam is standing around doing nothing while every other company shoots themselves in the foot.
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u/DamNamesTaken11 Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26
Only starts at 5 hours and caps at 15 hours a month before you have to pay to have more. I could maybe understand a little if they set it as weekly, but that’s absolutely tiny for a month included.
Only about 10 minutes per day for Essential and a half hour for Ultimate. What a joke.
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u/Nazrael75 Sep 04 '26
Microsoft: "we want to be prominent in gaming again"
Also Microsoft: does this bullshit
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u/AMLRoss Sep 04 '26
Consoles are getting worse and worse.
Currently Im a PC gamer, but I would rather pay thousands for Ram than a console that treats its customers like an ATM.
I have literally no reason to buy either the next PlayStation or Xbox.
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u/ux3l Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26
Xbox Game Pass cloud gaming monthly limits: Game Pass Ultimate: 15 hours Game Pass Premium: 10 hours Game Pass Essential: 5 hours
Wtf? 5 hours per month? And you have to pay for this? Why should someone buy the gamepass at all?
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u/Orgnok Sep 04 '26
those are some hillariously low numbers, 5h of gaming a month on the standard pass? Imagine netflix limited you to two movies a month.
It may as well just be pay per hour
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u/SwordhandsBowman Sep 04 '26
I’m old enough to remember when Netflix WAS 2 movies a month. DVDs mailed to you.
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u/geebiebeegee Sep 04 '26
I'm too old to keep changing how I game! I didn't like the digital era but I adapted. I found joy in trying all the games against my old school ways. Now with yo yo subscription prices and fundamentally changing the service i pay for on a whim whenever...? Gaaaa!
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u/zillskillnillfrill Sep 04 '26
Goodnight consoles, it's been.... Interesting seeing you all become enveloped by greed. I'll see myself out
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u/CypherAZ Sep 04 '26
I would rather buy a game for full price on steam then pay these assholes another dollar.
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u/LastBossTV Sep 04 '26
If anything, Microsoft is consistent.
Adding everything they can to the cloud, from data, to services, and eventually absolutely everything.
And to use any of that anything, you'll be paying a subscription. They want to undo the concept of Personal Computing entirely, and bring in the era of Subscription Computing.
They won't stop until investors can see clear as day that it's losing them money. So stop paying them, be it with your money, or your data.
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u/thehenryshow Sep 04 '26
HAHAHAHAHAHA fuck right off. Sony and Xbox are dead to me. Steam wins this war.
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u/Cheetawolf Sep 04 '26
Microsoft jumped the gun and probably ruined everyone's plans.
They were supposed to wait until local computing power was unaffordable and everyone was forced to use cloud systems with no other options, and THEN start pulling shit like this.
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u/EnderScout_77 Sep 04 '26
why do people use cloud gaming again? isn't there like, latency?
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u/kelamity Sep 04 '26
Drive up PC part prices and then force them into a limited cloud. Kinda like having to pay for a Cyber Cafe in your own living room
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u/soggybiscuit93 Sep 04 '26
Will this put the nail in the conspiracy that the hardware shortages were intended to push people to cloud gaming?
Turns out when gaming hardware prices skyrocket, even the game streaming companies dont wanna wanna buy the parts either because the whole business model relies on cheap hardware.
So now theyre rate limiting users instead.
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u/I_fight_demons Sep 04 '26
Hour limited online gaming? Are we really going back to 1991 playing The Shadow of Yserbius on Sierra Online?
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u/Disma Sep 04 '26
Golly, who could have possibly foreseen this happening? Guess what? It's going to get worse when everything is actually digital only and they have us by the balls.
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u/Agreeable-Agent-7384 Sep 04 '26
If a company with a huge cloud bussiness and infrastructure can’t provide unlimited cloud usage for gaming, it’s a dead idea.
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u/Stoofser Sep 04 '26
I don’t understand the logic behind this? Are they trying to stop people using cloud gaming? Because you can just download the game right, so why bother even having it an as option?
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u/ikilledtupac Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26
this is why they are getting rid of physical games and fighting ownership of digital
100% it’s been discussed to make all game on a pay per use basis in the cloud.
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u/Keith_Games Sep 04 '26
How the fuck did Sony and Microsoft make me think Nintendo is nicer to its consumers…
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u/Longjumping_Tutor480 Sep 04 '26
Microsoft and all these other companies are really trying hard to ensure they cease to exist in the next 30 years
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u/JudasPenguin Sep 04 '26
I have an xbox one so most of my gaming lately is cloud gaming (new games unsupported by my console). Guess I'm selling this shit and getting a laptop finally
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u/KiLLLLeR150 Sep 04 '26
5-15 hours? Is that an actual joke?
Fuck cloud gaming anyway, but they sure as hell aren't enticing anyone to use it.
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u/GRIP8219 Sep 04 '26
This is madness. "Pay to play" literally. I dont play a whole lot but the 15hrs max is trash. Will be ending my subscription this month.
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u/Mekoha22 Sep 04 '26
After 40 years, I think its finally time to hang up my hat and give up this hobby. The last 5years or so have only held on because of the indie devs.
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u/joeyat Sep 04 '26
So this is Microsoft’s way of killing off cloud gaming? They want the GPU’s back for AI.
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u/Canadish27 Sep 04 '26
"Why did you sting me?" Asked the frog "Now we will both drown"
"Because I am a scorpion"
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u/TomatoChomper7 Sep 04 '26
15 hours in a month seems like a pretty low ceiling for Ultimate. This makes Game Pass a much lower value proposition now to me, where its chief appeal would be playing games on my potato laptop that has a nice screen.
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u/snoozieboi Sep 04 '26
Race to the bottom.
Profits must go up so the product gets smaller so the price seems cheap, unless it is also a foggy subscription + per hour or some way to split the cost to make you think it is cheaper. My TV and broadband in my apartmentbuilding is partly in the montly shared "electronic services cost" and a personal fee. Oh and that fee just jumped 100%.
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u/HG21Reaper Sep 04 '26
And that is the end of cloud gaming.