“Tell me you just play AAA games without playing AAA games.” The official Xbox Game Pass account has destroyed its haters and the press eager to seek visits at the cost of continuous smear campaigns in a single sentence, causing a furor both among users and among independent publishers themselves. Yes Kotaku intended to launch a passive-aggressive harassment and takedown campaign against Xbox’s flagship service, within hours of the arrival of PS Plus in Asia and in eve of non-E3 2022, the play could not have turned out worse; users have not given the video game website a break and Twitter has been plagued with mentions, memes, links to contradictory news and endless responses that have ended the kotaku tale and, by extension, the rest of the press.
Xbox Game Pass destroys the story of the press and its continuous hate to the service
1.- Launch of PS Plus Asia and anti-transparency measures: end of the beach bar
For a few days, some users and many journalists have started a trend on Twitter called “I am unsubscribing from Xbox Game Pass because it does not have AAA”; trend that basically consists of people unsubscribing from Xbox Game Pass for not having AAA games. Fashion that would have been cast if it had not started a few hours after PS Plus coming to Asia and a few days after the FTC announced the adoption of serious measures against influencers or media that misrepresent the reviews of the former.
Regarding the first, as already announced, PS Plus has promised to arrive as Xbox Game Pass rival. But before that materializes, Sony will have to explain why it is charging to upgrade from basic to premium subscriptions, without warning its consumers, assuming for some a cost of more than $1000. But don’t worry, surely Kotaku and substitutes have already echoed this.
“Metacritic deletes over 6,000 negative reviews of Death Stranding.
Sony Pictures Entertainment agrees to pay the State $326,000 for fake reviews.
It’s official: users who gave The Last of Us good marks feared that Sony would blacklist them “, are some of the pearls that the FTC will regulate.
And regarding the second, a few days ago the FTC (Federal Trade Commission, North American Trade Commission, a public body in charge of ensuring good practices in trade and transparency) announced that it was going to take more severe measures against those who false, misleading, biased reviews or in any other way that may mislead your Internet audience. The consequences of this measure can be disastrous for those who live from advertising, because not only would they be obliged to publish when they promote through paid collaborations, but also, in the event of falsely announcing the poor quality of a product, the affected company could end up denouncing them. .
Little joke with this, because a campaign of «I unsubscribed from Xbox Game Pass for x reasons» could allow Microsoft to report if those x reasons were false. So perhaps this trend started as a tantrum against these measures, but it is likely that, if it continues, its days are numbered. And not only in the United States, because if they are approved in a country as libertarian and anti-regulatory as that, do not doubt that they will also reach Europe and the rest of the world.
2.- If you only play AAA, you don’t know about video games
Another message that the controversy of these last few hours has left us is the following: if you only play AAA, you don’t know about video games. Due to temporary impossibility plain and simple. You can’t know about video games if you just dust off the console once a year to play the AAA on duty, while the rest of the public enjoys lower budget games but just as good. Also, if we only limited ourselves to the big AAAs, where would developers like Focus, Annapurna, Devolver or Rebellion be, who bring us exit jewels to Xbox Game Pass, without us having to pay an additional cost.
But not going beyond an AAA shows that a person neither knows, nor wants to know, nor is he really interested in this hobby beyond getting a minimal impact on networks. Not leaving the AAA on duty, which can be delayed for years, shows that that person neither knows nor wants to know. For a simple mathematical question: if you wait for the game to be released and this game takes four years, you will obviously miss out on a lot of titles in between; titles that other users will play. And if those people are limited to the AAA on duty, without going through companies like Rebellion, Devolver or Annapurna, it is logical that there is knowledge that escapes them.
That the great claim of this year was Starfield? Well, it is very likely, but it would be better if it is delayed until it is launched according to the calendar and we end up having the broken Gran Turismo on duty or the Horizon Zero Dawn absolutely forgotten and trampled by Elden Ring. If Bethesda needs time, let it have it, because otherwise it would probably mean releasing a game halfway. And, while we wait, we can enjoy A Plague Tale Requiem or Sniper Elite 5in addition to what will be announced on June 12, whether it is AAA or not, because the important thing is to play.
And what is the worst of all this? That this lack of knowledge translates into analyzes or half-finished articles, with reluctance and laziness, riddled with errors and biased; analyzes and articles that, to top it off and on many occasions, correct the users and fans of the games. It’s true that analytics codes are late (if ever) and it’s not feasible to have the full game, if it’s a big one, for launch, so it’s more than likely that some things will be left out. But there is an abyss between forgetting things and not knowing what you are talking about, between working on an analysis and the only intention being to destroy it on purpose to generate controversy on Twitter. Who knows, maybe the FTC and the like will end up getting their hands on the analytics too. Ask Sony and the fine it had to pay for its fake reviews.
3.- “I am going to unsubscribe from Xbox Game Pass”. Does anyone care?
Perhaps the greatest success of today’s joke is that nobody seems to care what these people think anymore. Xbox has been making fun of it all day, inXile has been quick to join in, and independent developers have once again shown their support for the service. Users are more and more numerous Xbox GamePass offers more and more games, of all kinds, at a very affordable price. So really this Xbox Game Pass unsubscribe craze, is anyone interested beyond memes? It does not seem. In fact, it’s more than likely that many of these non-subscribers weren’t even subscribers in the first place and are simply one of those people who are bawling 24/7 on networks and forums, never touching a game.
But hey, this is the cross that has to endure on the eve of an E3 since ancient times. If the calculations do not fail, this will last until June 12, and then talk about the service being finished and it has no games, that it has games but not AAA, that it has games and AAA but no dates or, in case of that it has all of the above, that everything shown is CGI. Depending on what is presented at the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase, one of these options will be played, because the haters of reinventing themselves do not take it too well.
So we do our thing: put up with the fauna, enjoy the event and enjoy what comes.