The Digital Way: Games Pass and Readly

I am sure that most of the readers of this blog will be familiar with, if not actual users of, a digital subscription service. Be it Spotify, Amazon Prime, Netflix, BritBox or any of Apple's offerings (to name but a few), there has been spectacular growth in these services over recent years. In TIT Towers, we have active Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ subscriptions for television viewing, though today I would like to talk about two other services that fit very different requirements, Microsoft's Games Pass Ultimate and the Readly magazine service.

Just a small selection of games on the accompanying app.

Games Pass Ultimate is Microsoft's attempt at creating an all-inclusive gaming subscription. What you get for £10.99 per month is a selection of over 350 console titles and over 220 PC titles, including titles provided by the EA Play service that is also bundled in. To see how impressive that £10.99 is, let's break down what's on offer:

• Xbox Gold Live (online multiplayer - which I don't use, as well as four free titles per month to keep as long as you keep up the Gold subscription, and discounts in the Xbox store) = £6.99 p/m. 
• Xbox Games Pass (access to over 200 Xbox games to download. Rotating list of titles, but all Microsoft published games have so far been constant. All Microsoft titles also appear on launch day in Games Pass. When a title is going to be removed, users are advised and offered a 20% discount off the online store price) = £7.99 p/m
• EA Play (access to EA titles, discounts and rewards) = £3.99 p/m (or £19.99 annually)
• Games Pass for PC (as with Xbox but with some variation in titles) = £7.99 p/m
• Preview of xCloud, allowing you to stream and play over 100 Xbox games on your Android phone or tablet, with plans for other mobile devices in the future.

As you can see, that £10.99 covers £26.96 worth of subscriptions - so the face value is rather good. If that wasn't enough, there have been, and continue to be, various offers to gain access to GP Ultimate and converting your existing Live subs to the more comprehensive offering. That can get a little complicated so I'll leave you to Google those at your own leisure. 

For me, GP Ultimate is a wonderful service, allowing me to play titles that I might not see in any physical shop, try new titles that I am in two minds about paying £30-£60 for, as well as letting me seamlessly switch between the Xbox Series X downstairs to the PC upstairs for certain titles. There is also a companion app for your phone that allows you to control downloads and view the library of Games Pass games. 

Over the last year, I have played the following games via Games Pass: Call of the Sea (a charming Cthulhu themed adventure), Assetto Corsa (a realistic and rather twitchy racer), DOOM Eternal (brilliant shooter), Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (3rd person action which played horribly on base Xbox One but flies on the Series X - EA Play title), Subnautica (underwater survival/exploration), The Bard's Tale Trilogy/The Bard's Tale IV (role playing), Crysis (shooter - EA Play title - with the two sequels on the to-play list), Deliver Us The Moon (adventure game), Grim Fandango (seminal point and click adventure), Quantum Break (3rd person story-based shooter), Day of the Tentacle (another seminal point and click adventure), Full Throttle (yep, another classic point and click adventure), The Talos Principle (puzzler) and Conarium (first person Cthulhu adventure). That's quite a list and doesn't scratch the surface of the titles available. For value, ease of use and choice, I can find nothing to complain about.

Games Pass is the culmination of where the video games industry has been going for a few years now. It's not about ownership any more. Much like Netflix (for example) which has replaced buying movies on DVD, Games Pass is the alternative to buying titles from GAME, Gamestop or a local independent. Add to that the regular discounts on titles not in Games Pass which can be found in the Xbox store, and physical media's days are numbered. Yep, that's been prophesied for a few years now but the broadband infrastructure in the UK has improved and, let us be honest here, most physical discs are just keys to start a multi-gigabyte download of the game itself anyway, and that doesn't include the almost mandatory day one updates. Why bother with a store when it's quicker to buy via the console and you'll still have to wait for the download? It can be cheaper too, if you wait until the sales hit or it's an older title.

Now, I used to be a physical software collector - still am, in fact, but only in a limited way and for certain retro titles only. I pretty much buy most of my current gen games via the online store if they are not available via Games Pass. Gone are the days of having over seven hundred (700!) games for over twenty systems. I have neither the space to store them nor the time to play them, and if they're not going to be played, there is little point in owning them. It was the same with books. My library is down to a more manageable 200-ish though that is increasing slowly. Same principle though: if it's not likely I'll ever read a specific book again, it's not destined to stay on my shelves for long. However, the hardbacks by Massie (Dreadnought) and Chandler (Campaigns of Napoleon) are most definitely staying put! In fact, I think Chandler is due another perusal.

At the end of the day, it all depends on what you want. If you want a collection to savour for years to come, then something like Games Pass is probably not for you. If you just want a steady selection of new and older games to play, it's nigh-on perfect. 

The annual cost of £131.88 is not extravagant. In fact, if you look at how much a current gen title costs at retail (£60 though that's creeping to £70), then even your cheap CD Keys purchase can look expensive compared to Games Pass. As a consumer, you still, just, have a choice between brick and mortar disc sales, online disc sales and online download codes. Does that mean physical sales are doomed? Maybe. GAME in the UK exists only as part of Mike Ashley's empire, Gamestop is continually fighting against Chapter 11 in the US and independents have to find their own niche, much like Games Galaxy in Consett. Yep, it sells current gen software, but that's only part of its appeal, what with retro and merchandise taking up more space than Xbox/PS4/PS5 titles. Can I see myself ever buying a physical copy of a current (or next gen game)? Probably not. Will I still buy from independents? For their niche items, certainly.

It is the same with bookshops, Cogito in Hexham being a prime example. Whenever I have visited the town, that shop always gets a visit. I also still love to browse around Waterstones and will always try to find specific titles there first. There again, Amazon's Kindle bookstore remains a great place to find reference works at prices that don't leave the wallet pining for the fjords. Indeed, when a history book is under a tenner in the Kindle store but unavailable to buy new and second hand sellers want £40 plus for a copy, well, it's Kindle all the way. Anyway, I digress...

On to Readly, a magazine and newspaper subscription service that offers offline reading and multiple users per sub. From £7.99 per month, it's less than the price of two monthly magazines and, again, I think it's brilliant value. You get a range of titles from around the world, with a clear focus on the UK and US. 

This is just the front screen... and not my favourites list... honest!

It is something I was aware of but, prior to March 2020, never really considered. After all, I worked in central Newcastle so passed WH Smiths every day. However, with the lockdown came the situation that I was limited to whatever the local supermarkets carried and this was no good at all. This came to a head around June when Amazon held a sale on it's Fire 10 HD tablets and I picked one up for £105 instead of the usual £150. That was when I signed up for the 1 month free trial of Readly. By the end of that month, I had acquired a list of 26 publications in my favourites list. 

Based on buying five magazines a month (on average, I never bought every issue of every magazine, it always depended on the articles inside, with the exception of Wireframe, of which I was a subscriber), then that would be about £25. Over a year, that would be £300(!). The first year of Readly would be £110. the Kindle, £105. Total cost for year one = £215. Already an £85 saving. Year two: £120 for Readly, no hardware cost - a saving of £180! Adding my good lady, who is the only other user of the account (of which there can be up to five), then it's quite a saving. 

Now, some of you may be thinking "Hold on! What about the magazines? How do they make money?" Well, I am not entirely sure, but considering they have signed up to the services it must work for them. I believe they are paid on the number of downloads and pages read, so a proportion of the £9.99 sub goes to each magazine read. I am probably not a typical user, what with those 26 different titles, but on the plus side, I have discovered niche publications from other countries as well as a great selection of back issues going back several years. 

Are there downsides? Well, it's not directly supporting the magazines that I read, and whilst you can download issues to read offline, you have to be careful how much storage your device has if you go crazy with the downloads. Watch out for the pricing - you can sign up via the Readly website for £7.99 per month but if you subscribe via the app on your device of choice, you'll pay £9.99 per month - this is due to the app store of your choice taking their cut. Also, some publications have basically provided a simple electronic copy rather than a specifically formatted version so you'll have to zoom in for some to see really small text. There are also a few notable omissions from the list of titles. For example, whilst you get Miniature Wargames, you'll not find Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy, nor Wargames Illustrated, at least at present.

Back-issues are available too.

That being said, if you have an iPad, Kindle Fire or a decent Android tablet, I really do recommend trying this service out for a month. I do miss the tactility of a paper magazine, but not having them clutter up the place or having piles of never-to-be-read-again back issues is a bonus. Will I ever buy another physical magazine? Not sure. Excluding the niche computing format ones which are pretty much subscription only, probably not.

Much like video games with Games Pass, your experience with Readly will very much depend on whether you want to keep the content you have read/used. You don't own the titles and you don't control the long term access to them. Yet, for the low cost of entry and the benefits they provide, both services are very good examples of letting people access content they normally wouldn't be able to and have come into their own especially during the pandemic. As such, unless they very much change for the worse, I'll be keeping up these subs for a long while to come.