Discord Partners With Xbox For 'Starter Edition' Of Game Pass, Includes 50+ Titles

I'd assume this deal was in place before Asha took over. From a marketing perspective, they need to simplify GP, not add more versions/tiers.

This is a good strategy to get more people into Game Pass and hook them with some games, if they can add this tier to Netflix as was rumored it'd be a massive win, however the starter and essential tier should be one and the same, there's already too many tiers with the service, Starter, PC, Essential, Premium and Ultimate, there should be 3 at most imo.

@Tdx A new perk for free, that’s cool. I barely use Discord, but for people who use it a lot, it’s interesting.
It’s not a new subscription, but rather a benefit for Discord Nitro subscribers — they get a catalog of 50 games.
And for Game Pass subscribers with the existing plans, these are just Discord perks.
There’s no new subscription, whether you’re not subscribed or already have Game Pass

I will once again make the joke about Game Pass Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Enterprise editions.

Not just giving Discord nitro kinda sucks in my opinion.

It’s a good strategy — it pushes Discord users to subscribe to Game Pass, and it pushes Game Pass subscribers to subscribe to Discord. It’s a win‑win.

@fatpunkslim: And yeah, I also understood that it’s not a new subscription, not something you can get without already being subscribed to Discord. It’s basically just a perk.

Not getting any of the actual useful parts of Nitro really sucks. I guess I'm not surprised, they weren't going to give that up for "free", but Discord is already incredibly stingy.

Too many tiers and confusion in my eyes but I guess their goal is to just get everyone to subscribe for any GP tier.

I personally like the idea of PC/PC hybrids next gen for myself simply because no sub is required for anything.

@FraserG We agree that this isn’t a new subscription ? This ‘Starter Edition’ isn’t available to non‑subscribers — only to Discord subscribers. It’s a perk for Discord Nitro members, meant, I suppose, to encourage them to subscribe to one of the real Game Pass plans.

I’m saying this because it feels like there’s some confusion among your readers 🙂

I don’t even know what discord nitro is, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t care if I found out. I use discord fairly regularly to set up groups for any mp trophies in games I need to complete, but as long as I have the most basic messaging function possible that’s really all I’m looking for out of it. As an aside, I own most of these games that are part of this promotion anyway, as I’m sure a lot of people do. I’m not sure who exactly this is for.

Another thing being added that I will never use, um yay 🙄

@Tdx my wedding cake had fewer tiers than Game Pass does.

@Markatron84 Come on guys, make an effort — read the other comments. This isn’t a new subscription

Does it include online?

Only 9.99/month. Not too bad.

I mean, if its a tier of gamepass for subscribing to Discord, with different benefits, its still another tier of gamepass as its another option to access a different level of it regardless of who the sub is through.

@fatpunkslim

1. I know.
2. My wedding cake still had fewer tiers than Game Pass does.

Asha teased this not too long ago and virtually completely leaked. The response to this is odd to me. It's just a marketing beat. Anyone who doesn't already have a discord nitro subscription doesn't have to think about it. People who have a Discord Nitro subscription just got a nice bonus. Xbox is clearly just wanting to expand the reach of Xbox Game Pass which we know they desperately need to do especially with cloud gaming. Money has probably exchanged hands and I don't imagine from Microsoft as orbs aren't equal to game pass lite. This is also a way to help boost Xbox brand awareness. Discord is huge with communities and regions where Xbox isn't. Then the bigger goal is to pull in additional in game sales through the engagement and ultimately convert nitro users into buying an actual tier of Game Pass. Though again, for those of us who are Xbox gamers and not discord nitro users, there's nothing to thinn about. There's no additional option to subscribe to GP being added to the Microsoft store and people aren't realistically going to jump through hoops to buy Nitro for like $9.99 so they can have a worse version of game pass than even essential.

This is exactly what Xbox should be doing. They have a great ecosystem that billions of gamers still aren't aware of. This is some of the best marketing Game Pass has ever gotten. It literally just got plugged into the feed for any nitro user. This is also an easy system for them to replicate with phone carriers (like get a new 5G phone and Game Pass starter edition for free *upgrade to make the most of our 5G network with cloud gaming) or anything. It's something we can easily ignore, but for the many people out there that barely understand what Xbox is (there's a lot) this is a way for them to get their feet wet. More importantly Xbox is PUSHING it onto them. This type of aggressive marketing is what they need. Get Xbox in everyone's face.

Id rather they get rid and lower the price even more I'm not interested in Discord after the BS they've been doing. I'm also not interested in Fortnite, EA games and Ubi games via their extra to Ultimate tier as if I wanted to I would just buy them on sale.

I think I'd like to have a Premium tier with

Online
Cloud saves and play
200+ games

That would be perfect