Xbox Game Pass: Because Enough Is (Really) Not Enough.

Xbox Game Pass

By now it is a fact: we live in a historical period in which we are all too used to having everything, when and where we want. Think of services like Netflix for movies and TV shows, Spotify for music and Kindle Unlimited for literature of all kinds: we all have access to a truly impressive, perhaps even excessive, amount of entertainment.

The The world of video games is no less and over the years it has been able to build, one piece at a time, a series of structures capable of bringing this type of product even within such a particular world. Xbox Game Pass is just one of the examples that today's market can offer, and today we're going to face a reflection that often arises from a part of the user: having all this choice available, won't it be too much?

Xbox Game Pass: quantity and quality?

If in the older generation Microsoft has often and willingly hobbled, resulting at times even too much lower than the competition, this new gen has given the colossus Redmond new lifeblood. Under many points of view .

Thanks to a strategy made up of many small and large targeted actions, Xbox can now count on an ecosystem of products and services with few equals in the entire gaming industry. After all, the response from the public speaks for itself, with millions and millions of players who have chosen to live this generation by relying on the work of Phil Spencer and his associates: what was the spark that turned the situation around?

There are many answers, starting from the decision to invest in a series of realities in order to integrate them within the Xbox Game Studios: from Double Fine to giants like Bethesda, in short, today we can speak of a context of truly impressive dimensions. And as the title of this paragraph suggests, these are, to all intents and purposes, excellent results both in terms of quantity and quality.



But we're only talking about a piece of a much, much bigger mosaic. A work that finds its maximum expression in a service like Xbox Game Pass: a platform that today boasts a catalog with more than 100 titles, including PC and console, to play where and when you want. Here we can connect directly to the reflection that we introduced at the beginning, or whether perhaps we are really faced with something excessive.

The answer, as always, lies somewhere in the middle, but let's start from the beginning. Wanting to resort to a pinch of generalization, we can distinguish two types of gamers: one more interested in simple entertainment, and one more attentive and inclined to products of a certain quality. Both can enjoy a service like Game Pass with all it has to offer, clearly very differently. While the former will approach the ecosystem by trying and perhaps abandoning a large number of games in a short time, the latter will carry out a more careful analysis in order to find the perfect experience for his specific needs.

If on the one hand too much is an excuse to play more and more, on the other it is an opportunity to go in search of something new but always similar to particular tastes. It is certainly not for us to judge or evaluate in any way the choices of those who play, especially since it is always and in any case a very subjective experience.



The fact is that the existence of two such profiles is the demonstration of how effectively the right compromise has been created: Xbox Game Pass offers a selection of games of all kinds, from the great classics to the latest news passing through… Practically every type of title possible and imaginable. We can find thick masterpieces such as Halo and the Elder Scrolls saga, pastimes such as FIFA, independent titles such as Unpacking or Undertale, but also a lot of material for retrogaming lovers with various LucasArts graphic adventures and much, much more. In short, the world is beautiful because it is varied, and that of video games is certainly no exception.

Discovering (and rediscovering) video games.

What makes Xbox Game Pass a service of such a high level is therefore a precise factor: the variety. Imagine entering a museum and, as the very first thing, consulting the map of the entire building: you will find yourself in front of dozens of rooms, each linked to a particular artistic current or to a specific historical period. The Microsoft service is and does exactly this, with a proposal capable of covering topics and times of incredible proportions.

If we have and know how to use the right tools, this puts us in a very favorable condition: we can explore, also driven by the simple desire or interest to venture into something new, practically without any limits. Just like in a museum .



The wide variety of choices also allows us to do a sort of exercise for ourselves, increasingly refining our ability to understand whether a title can or not to suit us. Try and try again and again: this is the key to taking full advantage of a platform of this kind, but not only. The presence of so many works from the past brings an inestimable value to the entire context, as it gives us the opportunity to discover a multitude of titles that we may have missed in the past years.

At the same time we are also faced here with an opportunity: longtime players will in fact have the opportunity to relive these experiences, in short, perfect both for an already established audience and for new generations of users. Any practical examples? Day of the Tentacle is one of the most brilliant graphic adventures ever, capable in the nineties of giving way to a real definition of an immortal genre. The fact that the remastered edition, edited almost perfectly by Double Fine, is present on Game Pass is emblematic in this sense. The title by Schafer and Grossman can thus be experienced once again by those who loved it thirty years ago, just as it will be able to give a few hours of fun to those who have recently approached the world of video games. It is a process of discovery and rediscovery, which presents itself as potentially endless.



Reconnecting to the reflection present in the title of this study, we can therefore reaffirm that no: too much is not too much, or at least not in an absolute sense. There are certainly a thousand nuances of what is now a new way of perceiving the videogame medium, but today more than ever the right critical approach can transform every experience into an opportunity to live it to its fullest potential. With the hope and awareness that, after all, we are only at the beginning.