Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft Games Studios, sat down to talk a bit about the Xbox platform and its future within Microsoft at South by Southwest. One of the things that came up during his talk was the state of Games with Gold, the program that sees Xbox Live Gold members receive two “free” games a month. Since its inception, the program has faced criticism from gamers for its selection of games when compared to Sony’s similar program, Playstation Plus.
To his credit, Spencer faced the criticism head on. But as is typical of a Microsoft executive, he didn’t seem to understand the fundamental issue people have with the program. According to Spencer, the essential difference between Games with Gold and Playstation Plus is that of actual ownership. If you are a Gold member and at some point have it lapse, you don’t lose your Games with Gold games like you do with Playstation Plus. This is 100% true and Spencer claims that, because of this, selecting games for the program is quite different from how a subscription based program, like Playstation Plus, would handle things.
His message comes across as “we are offering you ownership which is better than whatever PS+ is giving you.” No one is disputing that owning something is a good thing. The problem with this line of thinking is that the majority of gamers don’t care about owning Assassin’s Creed II, Gears of War, or Halo 3 when the competition is offering up Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite. The reality is that games are consumable. We eat them up and spit them out to move on to the next thing. It isn’t necessarily right but it is how the gaming community does things. As such, Microsoft is offering up beef jerky, while Sony is offering up steak. But we’re regurgitating all of it anyway, so it might as well taste fresh when we do scarf it down.
Spencer noted that our feedback has been heard and the Games with Gold team, which he is not officially a part of, is working on making the program something that aligns more with what we want. Hopefully they’ve taken the right things out of the constant complaints from the community and will be able to come through on that promise. And hopefully they will get the program running on Xbox One sooner rather than later.
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