Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Review: The best content deal in games right now

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Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is an all-you-can-play video game subscription service with exceptional value. It has evolved far beyond its Xbox-related origins to become a subscription that offers something for everyone who plays and now includes console and PC game downloads, access to online multiplayer services, a deal with gaming giant EA, and a cloud-based service that streams games to almost any device. It also offers many day one launch games from Microsoft studios.

Finding the right version of Game Pass can be confusing. Microsoft offers several versions, but because of the way features are split between them, only the $ 15 / month Ultimate plan (which we abbreviate here at XGPU), with all the benefits outlined above, really makes sense.

It’s that collection of features, for less than the cost of a 4K Netflix subscription, that earns Game Pass Ultimate an Editors’ Choice Award for 2021.

I like A unique breadth of functionality Great for console and PC gaming 400 game catalog I don’t like Available games change frequently Headache for PC integration Cloud games limited to 1080p at 60fps Choose the right plan

The plain old Game Pass costs $ 10 a month and only includes a library of popular to obscure games, which you can download and play on Xbox One or Xbox Series X and Series S consoles. As with all of these subscriptions, games come in and out. regularly from the library due to licensing agreements, but Microsoft products such as Halo and Forza are generally permanent. Even when a game leaves the library, however, you can transfer your progress to another store like Steam, not easily, but you can.

If you want to play online multiplayer, in most cases you will need a separate Xbox Live subscription of $ 10 per month to play online against other people. It’s included in the Ultimate package, so you can already see why this is the plan Microsoft is really pushing you towards.

Keep in mind that free-to-play games, like Fortnite, don’t require an Xbox Live subscription for multiplayer.

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The $ 10 / month Game Pass for PC plan uses a Windows-only Xbox app to download and install a subset of games from the full Game Pass library to play locally instead of streaming. Since these are full PC games, you will need a gaming laptop or desktop with a graphics card and a powerful enough processor, as well as plenty of hard drive space, to use it. Game Pass for PC also includes EA Play, a subscription that alone costs $ 5 per month or $ 30 per year.

But the best value lies in the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. For $ 15 a month, you get both console and PC game libraries, EA Play benefits and discounts, as well as Xbox Gold – $ 10 a month alone – which focuses on online multiplayer games. To top it off, you can play on phones, iPads, or even a Mac using Xbox Cloud Gaming. For anyone who loves both console and PC gaming, it will be hard to find a better deal, especially if cloud gaming continues to become a bigger part of the mix.

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Game selection

Action-adventure games and shooter series such as Battlefield, Destiny 2, Gears of War and Halo make up the bulk of the service catalog of around 400 games. According to our tally, action / adventure games made up 30% of titles on Game Pass, with shooters accounting for another 15%. RPGs and sports titles also had a decent showing, but horror fans and puzzle buffs will find a smaller selection (around 5% of the library). However, Game Pass offers access to classic platformers like Banjo Kazooie, matching and puzzle games, RPGs, and unique indie games like Twelve Minutes and Hades.

The games are sorted into categories so you can easily find family-friendly, action-packed games or even a last chance for games that are about to expire from the platform. Game Pass is such a complete and intuitive service: once you find a title that interests you, download the game to start playing.

Action games and shooters dominate the Game Pass library, but its catalog offers something for everyone.

The Game Pass Ultimate difference: breadth and depth

For its intended purpose, Microsoft has unmatched advantages over its competitors for several reasons. The company has a long history in gaming – Microsoft Flight Simulator launched 40 years ago and Xbox 20 years ago – and owns the DirectX graphical programming interface used by both Windows and its Xbox consoles. It has established game development studios and devours more independent studios every year, plus it has relationships with all major game developers. And it runs a huge network of state-of-the-art data centers optimized to serve cloud applications – Xbox Cloud Gaming is as much about Azure as it is fun.

The key here is “intended purpose”, because XGPU is just one of our two Editors’ Choice Awards for cloud gaming: the other is Nvidia GeForce Now. XGPU is great if you don’t already have a large library of games or if you want to play it on any device, making it a good choice for almost everyone. GeForce Now is great if you already have a huge library of PC games and want to play them on any device with high quality and frame rates, making it a good choice for more veteran gamers.

The two complement each other more than they compete and require minimal adaptation work for developers, ensuring rapid growth in the number of games supported. (It probably takes longer to sign license agreements than to prepare a game for both services.)

By contrast, most of XGPU’s competitors only tackle pieces of the whole picture; for example, both Google Stadia and Amazon Luna have robust networks for streaming to multiple devices, but they have small game libraries because games are more difficult to carry.

And an annoying irony is that Sony had the biggest advantage of all over cloud gaming and pretty much blew it up, leaving PSNow just a nice and relatively cheap choice as a PlayStation game library that doesn’t even offer the latest exclusives from. Sony as XGPU does.

Xbox Cloud Gaming allows you to take your Game Pass games to other devices.

Microsoft where it falls short

Being an all-rounder, XGPU doesn’t master every aspect. For example, its cloud gaming stream is still limited to 1080p at 60fps, while Stadia can run 4K and GeForce Now 1440p at 120fps.

And there are few things that make you more angry than playing on your PC and finding the game won’t launch until you update Windows because the Xbox app is too entangled with the Microsoft Store, a big problem that has often pushed to switch to other non-Game Pass games.

It offers a significant number of new games and Day One launches, but the library regularly drops games as well. Like many subscription services, the game (or movie or TV show) you want always seems to be on the service you aren’t subscribed to.

While it’s great that EA Play is included in the subscription price for XGPU, it’s not so tightly integrated. For example, on the PC you still need to install Yet Another Launcher and the family settings in XGPU do not apply to EA Play.

The game of value

When it launched, Game Pass looked a lot like Netflix in its early days of streaming – an interesting idea, but a subtle catalog. It is now the default release platform for major games from Microsoft-associated publishers like Bethesda and hit series like Halo and Forza.

Because it has evolved into the multi-headed hydra that is Game Pass Ultimate, it’s hard to rationalize even buying an Xbox without a subscription. A 12-month subscription costs the same as three major new game releases (or even less, now that many new games have gone up to $ 70). And more importantly, it gives gamers the chance to experience a much wider range of games from developers of all sizes, solving one of the biggest game discoverability problems.

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