This week, Xbox announced they are not only increasing the price for Xbox Game Pass, but they’re siloing day one first party titles onto their most expensive platform tier. This is just the latest development of the rot economy, something friend of the site Riley MacCleod beautifully explains over on Aftermath.
And he’s right, this is just another huge corporation deciding that you’re in too deep to care that the services you’re paying more for also are beginning to suck more, a relationship that should, in a working economy, never be inverted.
A mega corporation deciding to do this isn’t news and it isn’t surprising, but what’s particularly vexing for me is the populist quality Phil Spencer and his marketing team adopted over the past few years. Standing in front of a camera in a carefully selected graphic tee and Banana Republic jacket, Phil would, for years, frame the entire Xbox way of being as a two-way conversation between players and platform holder.
It’s about where YOU want to play. It’s about YOUR games and YOUR platform. It’s about YOUR choices. It’s about YOUR comfort. It’s about YOUR convenience. It’s about YOUR nostalgia. It’s about YOUR fun. It’s about YOUR memories.
Watching ten years worth of Phil Spencer talking heads really demonstrates how boilerplate community-positive words can morph into an all-encompassing corporate ethos, where Xbox is your gaming buddy. I’d say only fools would believe this kind of thing, but I wonder how much everyday people might buy into what has been pretty widely circulated marketing content for the better part of decade.
Now that every big swing Xbox has made in the past five years is being unraveled as just too much for Microsoft to handle, everything Phil Spencer wanted us to buy into feels especially empty.
One of the conversations I remember some colleagues having in the wake of Xbox Game Pass’ initial announcement was how much it would’ve affected their habits growing up in households with little disposable income. At $240 per year, I wonder about how this affects younger gamers in houses where extra monthly cost isn’t a no-brainer.
I’m mostly preaching to the choir. You, dear reader, already know corporations aren’t your friends. Still, I wish the people in charge of corporations would face stiffer judgment when they frame their calculated business decisions as expressions of community.
