Can you believe that it's been four years since Microsoft introduced Xbox Game Pass to the world? Back in early 2017 (February 28, 2017, to be exact), the company officially announced its "new digital gaming subscription service" that would provide an "enjoyable and seamless experience" with over 100 titles at launch.
Initially, Xbox Game Pass was made available to members of the Xbox Insider Program before eventually rolling out to the public on June 1, 2017, launching at a price of $9.99 USD per month on Xbox One with a 14-day free trial.
"Xbox Game Pass reflects our continuing aspiration and commitment to offer gamers the best product for the most value, and joins the diverse experiences only available on Xbox One such as Xbox One Backward Compatibility and Xbox Play Anywhere.
With one low monthly price for unlimited access to tons of games, along with exclusive discounts, Xbox Game Pass is a tremendous opportunity to better meet the needs of all gamers."
Something the Xbox team also made very sure to highlight at the time was that you could download (rather than stream) the games to your Xbox One console through the Xbox Game Pass service, meaning you could enjoy "continuous, full-fidelity gameplay without having to worry about streaming, bandwidth or connectivity issues."
As for the games, it was a fairly barren selection at launch compared to the hundreds of great titles available in today's incredible Xbox Game Pass library, with the majority actually made up of Xbox 360 games, but nevertheless the likes of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Halo 5: Guardians and Sunset Overdrive were notable Xbox One highlights.
Here's a list of the Xbox One specific games that were included at launch (thanks VG247):
- Bard’s Gold
- Blood Bowl
- Brothers
- D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die
- DmC: Devil May Cry – Definitive Edition
- The Book of Unwritten Tales 2
- Defense Grid 2
- Electronic Super Joy
- Farming Simulator 16
- Gears of War: Ultimate Edition
- Halo: Spartan Assault
- Halo 5: Guardians
- Jumpjet Rex
- Knight Squad
- KYUB
- Layers of Fear
- Lumo
- Mad Max
- Massive Chalice
- Max: The Curse Of Brotherhood
- Mega Coin Squad
- Mega Man Legacy Collection
- NBA 2K16
- Olli Olli
- Payday 2 Crimewave Edition
- Resident Evil 0
- Roundabout
- Saints Row 4 Re-Elected
- Steredenn
- Strider
- Sunset Overdrive
- Super Mega Baseball Extra Innings
- Super Time Force
- Screamride
- Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse
- Terraria
- The Golf Club
- The Swapper
- WWE 2K16
The Xbox 360 selection was actually significantly more impressive, including the full BioShock trilogy, Banjo-Kazooie & Tooie, multiple Gears of War classics and many, many more. Interestingly, some of the titles included in this initial version of Xbox Game Pass are still present in the library in 2021, despite not being published by Microsoft.
It's a common misconception that Xbox Game Pass was releasing day one first-party games into the service at launch, but that wasn't actually announced until January of 2018, when Xbox boss Phil Spencer revealed the news on the Xbox Wire website, saying the team had been "blown away with the incredible response" to Xbox Game Pass.
"Moving forward, we plan to release all new Xbox One exclusive games from Microsoft Studios into Xbox Game Pass on the same date as their global release.
This plan to bring new games timed with their global release into Xbox Game Pass not only includes announced titles like Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2, and Crackdown 3 but future unannounced games from Microsoft Studios including new iterations of our biggest Xbox One exclusive franchises such as Halo, Forza and Gears of War, on the same day they launch."
The first game from Xbox Game Studios (then known as Microsoft Studios) to be launched into Xbox Game Pass was Sea of Thieves on March 20, 2018, and the first non-Xbox published game to release day one on the service was the indie multiplayer vehicular shooter Robocraft Infinity a month later.
Of course, we all know what happened from there. Xbox Game Pass continued to evolve with many more games and perks for members, including two more variations of the service in the form of Xbox Game Pass for PC and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, as well as the long-awaited rollout of Xbox Cloud Gaming as recently as a few months ago.
But even back at launch, Xbox boss Phil Spencer was promising big things from Xbox Game Pass, and we couldn't have predicted it would have evolved to the extent it has in 2021. It's been a crazy journey, and it's still just getting started!
"We’ve only scratched the surface of the opportunity this new model brings to the industry and what we can deliver to our fans. We firmly believe Xbox Game Pass will be a catalyst to create new opportunities for game developers and publishers to innovate in the way games are developed and delivered, leading to entirely new ways to play."
Were you subscribed to Xbox Game Pass back at launch in 2017? Let us know in the comments below.
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Comments 22
Best gaming-related decision I ever made was jumping from PS4 to Xbox One and getting subscribed to Game Pass. It opens up access to games that I otherwise would have been hesitant to spend money on and gets me to try games that might be outside my usual comfort zone.
Game Pass in just incredilble value for money and is a good thing for any gamer.
Crazy to think this service has risen to the point where MS are happily letting Xbox spend $7.5 billion on Zenimax and still looking to spend more!
I didn't get into Xbox Game Pass until Master Chief Collection came to PC as a result of never owning an Xbox past the original but it's a nice companion to having my PlayStations and Switch with me so I get a little bit of everything especially as someone not as into Xbox compared to other platforms
Was happily subscribing to gold then had the offer of game pass upgrade for £1. Stunning. Plus getting reward points each month to top up my subscription means a bit of time and effort I've got it many months of enjoyment. Got a great balance with Xbox and Switch. Will grab a PS5 when they become more available but in no rush.
I didn’t think I’d ever use it when it launched and I’m happy I gave it a try in 2020. I have tried a lot of different games that previously I wouldn’t have spent money on, some have been clunkers I quit playing pretty quick but I’ve also found some gems.
Loved Man of Medan and that caused me to to buy Lost Hope and I’ll probably buy every game in the series when they come out.
I watched a YouTube video of a collector who has been buying and playing on PlayStation for 20 years and he has now decided to buy a Series X along with Game Pass. The reason being that it's just too costly to be constantly buying games, not to mention all the space required in order to store them. I feel the same way and the reason I brought him up as an example is because people like to use the argument that Game Pass doesn't offer you physical games and that it's only a rental service. But here's the thing, at what point do you stop and realise that you've been collecting games for far too long and that you're only playing the games once before putting them away and playing something else, never to play those games ever again. That's what I've come to terms with recently becuase it just feels like such a waste. On top of that, we've come to find out that you never truly own the games you buy (either digitally or physically) on PS3 or PS4 as you only buy the license and Sony can revoke the use at any point, not to mention the recent story about the internal clock of PS3/PS4 stopping to work which will render all your physical games useless. At that point, it genuinely doesn't matter if you own physical copies of the games or not. At least with Microsoft's approach regarding game preservation, interconnected infrastructure and Game Pass, we can be enjoying games the same way we've been doing for years to come.
Game Pass has led to me spending 90% of my time on Series X, and my ps5 hardly gets a look in. I typically buy PS exclusives when they hit the £30 mark, but Games Pass is slowly changing that view. If Microsoft can start publishing more games of Sony's quality, then it's going to put a lot of pressure on Sony.
I've had it for just over 2 years now, largely due to the fact that it cost me £1 for most of that and until October this year. In that time I've used it mainly for Sea of Thieves and a few indie games that I wouldn't have tried otherwise. There has definitely been some great games on the service but by and large I already owned them.
Currently I'm using it on PC but that awful Xbox app puts me off playing them much of the time and there's a surprising amount of issues considering it's a Microsoft OS it's running on. That said Flight Simulator is installing for me to play and I do have a couple of others on there.
Overall I'm not sure if it's for me and doubt I'd subscribe for full price, so come October that will probably be it as far as Gamepass is concerned and I'll just buy the Xbox games I want on Steam. It doesn't help that most of the games I'm looking forward to won't be on it anyway, so it's rather pointless to pay for a service I'm unlikely to use
Gamepass was a big part of me choosing xbox over PlayStation. Loving the service and the games that I've played as result of it, i think at least half the games I've played I would have never tried if I had to buy them outright... maybe even if i could rent them like us older gamers used to do as kids. This service is definitely for me and I'm loving it, signed up until 2023!
@carlos82 What is the deal with that Xbox app on PC? It's horrible. It erased my saves for Ghost of a Tale - twice - losing me hours of progress. I called MS and the guy was like, "Huh. That's weird." So yeah, thanks but no thanks. Sticking to Steam and GOG for PC gaming.
I either got this in 2018 or 2019
Wait it has been 4 years? My life... it runs from me.
Bought myself a two year gamepass with quite a good deal as I got my Xbox X.
Already the EA alone is giving me run for the money. That with for example Kingdom Hearts complete collection and MS exclusives. I have already games for two years.
But what really sold me after the purchase is the multiplayer. Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Enlisted etc. Just being able at anytime hop in the system and find friends and foes to play with.
I love single player games. But Gamepass made me multiplayer.
@everynowandben it's just shocking, you only have low level access to the game files and it hides the installs from you, it's like they're trying to make your PC into a console by removing all the advantages a PC would have. I'll certainly never buy a game through it
I joined at launch before knowing it would be this good because of the Gold offer. I remember that the first first-party games to join the service at launch were Sea of Thieves, Crackdown 3 and State of Decay 2. More recently, big third--party games that I wanted to buy anyway joined it, including Japanese gems like Kingdom Hearts and Dragon Quest XI. Game Pass became better than I anticipated and allows me to try games I wouldn't have tried otherwise.
Gamepass is the best deal in gaming..
@SegataSanshiro I mean I can't say I've had any games crash, it's getting them started in the first place I often struggle with. You definitely have nowhere near the options that you do for Steam for either modifying games or the general usage of the launcher though, which is frustrating. What I have been surprised about is how many games I've installed that just didn't work straight away and ever since the recent update it has been super laggy for me when just browsing games. As I said I'll use it for Gamepass whilst I'm subscribed but I will never buy a game on it when all the other launchers are far superior
Xbox Game Pass... so good that I even subscribe to it twice due to having 4 Xboxes. It’s that amazing that even if the price jumped up to £19.99 I’d still keep the subscriptions.
4 years on and there’s still people saying Game Pass isn’t sustainable and that it’s bad for gamers in the long run... yeah right.
@carlos82 That's fair and important to remember. Game Pass ISN'T for everyone. The sort of players that main one game for years may not utilise the value on offer. It's not like we have unlimited time.
@themightyant I can see why it appeals to many but at the moment it's largely stuff I already own such as the Bethesda and Yakuza games that are getting added, for someone coming into those games fresh then it looks to be an incredible deal.
There was also I good article I read about gamers with disabilities who often run into issues where games simply aren't playable for them. These may not be present early on so Gamepass is a great way for them to have access to many games to play and not waste their money on those they simply can't enjoy.
At the moment for me it's games like Resident Evil Village I'm looking forward to which I'd have to buy anyway, or upcoming Switch games and like you said we only have a finite amount of time to play and now that I'm back at work that is considerably less. As we get further into this gen when Xbox finally gets a steady stream of first party titles it'll certainly be something that I look into again
@carlos82 Agree 100%. And to be clear I think there is a LARGE number of people, probably even the majority, it doesn't appeal to. Here where we are all enthusiasts there is definitely a bias towards it. But despite personally loving it I wouldn't recommend it to many groups. My sisters, some of my mates or those who only play 2, 3, 4 specific games a year - it's not a good deal for those groups, and they are the majority of game players, not us here.
But Microsoft is making great inroads it seems. It will be interesting to see how this falls when people ACTUALLY start paying $10/$15 a month, not the $1 deal etc. and/or if prices go up.
The article on Game Pass and disability was great, with most people's disabilities being a little different, nuanced and effectively niche it was difficult to have a definitive answer if "you" could play the game. Game Pass, like Steams 2 hour refund policy, neatly sidesteps this, just try it and find out yourself.
Personally I have a huge backlog across platforms, and have been conditioned to not play games at launch anymore 95% of the time. As such my biggest complaint about Game Pass is a completely first world one. It makes my backlog ever growing and completely insurmountable, giving me (minor) stress over not being able to play everything and FOMO when things leave.
The pros massively outweigh the cons for me, but I can clearly see it isn't for all.
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