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Microsoft Store & PC Game Pass Thread

Markman

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Alright, paid 1 dolla and it upgraded my gold and pass to Ultimate. It just converted the time I had left to Ultimate and next time I gotta pay besides this dollar is in march 2020.
Still looks pretty bare compared to the one on the xbox, not all games are showing. When searching for Metro this showed up
4etPf8a.jpg


Installing doesnt work, I get some error code but Operencia for example works.
Cancelling download made the app to crash.
This still needs a ton of work.
 

hpstg

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Isn't this the reason they'll launch it around September, with the next version of Windows?
 

Kem0sabe

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I signed up for the ms game pass on pc, 1.99€ frost month, and 3.99 the next. Some good value games available, including football manager, gears of War 4, gears of War ultimate, mutant year zero, metro exodus, etc. If they add halo series and their next exclusives, it's well worth it.
 
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Game pass worked ok in February but when I went for the 3 months for a dollar thing they had going a month ago I couldn't download a goddamn thing. Also remember that Gears 4 doesn't work on current nvidia drivers.
 

DalekFlay

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Installing doesnt work, I get some error code but Operencia for example works.
Cancelling download made the app to crash.
This still needs a ton of work.

Well it looks better than the Windows Store bullshit anyway, like a real game client. With them saying everything is coming to Steam now though I'm not sure why I'd use it, but glad they're doing something better.
 

Markman

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The catch will be all those exclusives from their game studios at release. Thats where most of the value is for Game Pass. While Metro is a nice bonus it isnt the magnet like Forza, Halo, Gears and all the new shit that will come out from their 14 game studios.

For 5 bucks a month its not even comparable to Origins or uPlays sub option that are at $15.

For me that is long time Xbox owner its just a bonus that doesnt cost me a cent more.

Gaming tip: the Epic exclusive Void Bastards is available now there so give it a try.
Decent romp, only annoying thing I could mention is that the map can get confusing cause it doesnt rotate and there are different entry points so north isnt always north.
 

Hellion

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Feb 5, 2013
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Got the game pass for 1 dorra just to play Metro Exodus.

For the first 2 hours the MS Store wouldn't even load due to heavy traffic.

Then the game wouldn't even download unless I updated Windows, and Windows refused to download the updates for some reason (or in some attempts, it downloaded them and then refused to install them).

Finally managing to update Windows, MS Store decides it doesn't want to download the 20 new updates it requires because of the updated Windows. A store cache reset seemed to fix that.

FINALLY managed to download and play the game one day later. Played for a couple of hours, died, tried to reload... no saved games. Apparently, you had to run the game as administrator or the checkpoint autosaves don't even work.

Authentic MS Store experience, 10/10 would visit again.
 

Kem0sabe

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Got the game pass for 1 dorra just to play Metro Exodus.

For the first 2 hours the MS Store wouldn't even load due to heavy traffic.

Then the game wouldn't even download unless I updated Windows, and Windows refused to download the updates for some reason (or in some attempts, it downloaded them and then refused to install them).

Finally managing to update Windows, MS Store decides it doesn't want to download the 20 new updates it requires because of the updated Windows. A store cache reset seemed to fix that.

FINALLY managed to download and play the game one day later. Played for a couple of hours, died, tried to reload... no saved games. Apparently, you had to run the game as administrator or the checkpoint autosaves don't even work.

Authentic MS Store experience, 10/10 would visit again.

I cant even play the games, went through all that windows version update, then when i launch the game, it refuses to get past the "press enter" screen because im not logged into to an xbox live account... when i alt tab and try to login to the xbox app, it does nothing when i press "sign in"... fuck that.
 

hpstg

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Sounds like your Windows installation is borked.

Also, Windows update is shit for major versions. If you have issues, it is best to clean install between major updates (from 1809 to 1903 etc). It shouldn't be like that, but apparently a trillion dollar company can't figure out what a few booger-eating nerds did twenty years ago.
 

Markman

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Installed Halo Wars and it works as advertised.

But with Metro Exodus I still get that x0000005 or something error code when clicking the install button. Think its got to do with admin rights or some shit, but Im logged in as admin as the only acc on the PC. Aint got time to fuck around with it, its already on the X.
Shame tho, I wanted to check if it syncs saves.
 

hpstg

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Installed Halo Wars and it works as advertised.

But with Metro Exodus I still get that x0000005 or something error code when clicking the install button. Think its got to do with admin rights or some shit, but Im logged in as admin as the only acc on the PC. Aint got time to fuck around with it, its already on the X.
Shame tho, I wanted to check if it syncs saves.
This error usually signifies a problem either with the integrity of the Windows installation, or with the account.

Try running sfc/scannow from an admin Powershell window. It takes quite a bit of time to run. If it returns errors, your Windows installation needs fixing. Check here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026529/windows-10-using-system-file-checker
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamer.com/you-should-...ere-you-want-to-buy-them-says-microsoft-exec/

'You should be able to buy games where you want to buy them' says Microsoft exec
Executive VP of gaming Phil Spencer on the new Xbox app and bringing MS games to Steam.

spMdL8DtYy3BBmKdLGzgYf-320-80.jpeg


Microsoft has been haphazardly trying to court PC gamers for a while now, but this year's E3 seemed like more of a sincere effort. Old PC franchises are being resurrected, we've got old and new Halos on the way, and there's a new app to replace the terrible Microsoft Store. Head of gaming Phil Spencer says Microsoft's not trying to replace other stores, however, and the publisher's approach will be an open one.

"I didn't want people to think this was our attempt to go and push all the other stores out of the way," says Spencer. "In fact, if you want to buy games from us, we want to give you a choice where you buy those games. So the announcement of Halo: Master Chief Collection coming to both Steam and our store was us saying you should be able to buy the games where you want to buy them. We want to make sure the communities are all connected, so we obviously had to work with Valve ensuring that, regardless of where you bought the game, you'd be one community playing together."

With the current wave of hostility directed towards store exclusives and Epic in particular, it's easy to score points by presenting yourself as open and 'for gamers', but Spencer says they're different strategies and he believes Tim Sweeny and Epic are "working from what they believe is what's best for both them, their creators and their players". Microsoft may release games on the Epic Games Store and other places in the future, too, though right now Steam's the focus.

With Steam being the largest of the stores, it makes sense to start there. Spencer says that Valve's also been supportive when it comes to making sure everyone still gets to play together, and he got advice from friends at Valve when it came to bringing the Xbox Game Pass at PC. This doesn't mean more stores are out of the question, and there's no reason why we wouldn't see them appear on GOG or the Epic Games Store somewhere down the line.

As for what's going to appear on Steam, it sounds like it will be most games, at least going forward. "My expectation is that our games will be available on Steam," says Spencer. "You can never say 'always ever', because then something will happen with rights in certain situations where something might not happen, but we have a really good relationship with the team over there. We go over and talk to them about a lot about the plans we have—it's a good, healthy conversation. So there's nothing in our plans that would say there's a reason we wouldn't continue to ship our games on Steam."

Microsoft's also looking into bringing existing games over, and Sea of Thieves was one of the most requested games on Steam, after Halo. It's a matter of finding time to do the work required to get it ready for Steam. Microsoft's not ready to make announcements about it yet.

Keep an eye out for our full interview with Phil Spencer.
 

Explorerbc

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I never thought I would view Microsoft in a positive way but here we are.

I think they picked the right moment, they get to sort of break the "evil" Epic embargo in the eyes of gamers, and offer a competitive price as insentive instead of exclusivity.

Subscription based models might be the way of the future (and perhaps to beat Steam)
 

Irata

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Microsoft is counting on people who enjoy their games to pay for their subscription service. So they're trying to reach as many people as possible (which is why they're supporting Windows 7 again).

"Hmmm... 15 dollars for Halo 8, but I can get that and more games for just 5 dollars a month!?! Sign me up!"

Microsoft couldn't care less about the money they make from sales on Steam. If it doesn't cause people to eventually stay in their Windows Xbox walled garden then it will be considered a failure.
 

Markman

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Ye, its a tricky move. Like Netflix for games.

Only this time they will have alot more "exclusives" to pump into service in next few years.
So far its been State of decay, Forza Horizon, Sea of thieves and Crackdown on release and some low budget stuff since GamePass started.

On a plus note, after Windows updated itself the Metro download works.
One bad thing when it comes to their store is that there is no speed limit cap on downloads, when it starts downloading it just eats all the bandwith and everything else dies on AC wifi.
 

Markman

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Dont think so, this is what it looks like, didnt even know it existed. All I know is when I download shit from Microsoft store and now xbox app it just kills everything.
Its pretty fast download of 55 GB at 100mbit but annoying as fuck cause you cant even browse while downloading or use any other device connected to same wifi.
OQP9jnI.jpg
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/2019/06/11/microsofts-game-pass-is-a-kafkaesque-nightmare-on-pc/

Microsoft’s Game Pass Is a Kafkaesque Nightmare on PC

d4536c8f-ec84-466d-a5fc-09e38bbc8178-1080x608.jpg

Microsoft is rolling out a new cloud gaming service. It will let you stream from the cloud in a way similar to the Google Stadia service launching in November, but you can also stream locally from your Xbox to another device. This is a really ambitious plan. I’ll come back to cloud gaming in a bit but first let’s talk about my experience with Microsoft’s other big announcement.

I’m watching the Xbox briefing at E3 2019 when the presenter announces the newXbox Game Pass. Like all the other big companies, Microsoft is offering access to a curated list of middling games (along with a few good ones) for a flat monthly fee. The service is going to cost $10 a month, but the presenter says that if we sign up now we can get the first month for $1. That sounds good to me. I go to the page and sure enough:

image6.jpg


I go through the sign up, verify my email, and provide my payment information. Everything is pretty standard so far. But when it comes time to pay, it tries to charge me $10. What happened to the $1 introductory price? I can’t find it now.

Maybe the store page is showing the standard price, and it’ll apply the discount at checkout? There’s no way to be sure. I go all the way through, complete the transaction, and end up paying the full $10. I have no idea where the $1 deal went.

There’s a return policy. I could try that. But refunds tend to be slow and difficult and I’d probably need to wait for it to complete before I could try to get the pass again. I’m feeling a bit ripped off here, but I really do want to see what’s available on the Xbox Game Pass service. I shrug and move on.

I try to browse for games, but when I click on the web page it launches the Windows 10 Store. The Windows 10 Store shows me the exact same page I was just viewing in Chrome, except now the interface is ridiculously slow and unresponsive.

The main thing I’m interested in is the new version of Microsoft Flight Simulator. I try searching for it, but instead I find this:

image3.jpg

For the rest of this article, please stop every paragraph and scroll back up to look at this image again so you can understand what it was like using the Windows 10 Store to browse games. Pages load slowly, and after a few clicks I end up at one of two different error pages. Refreshing the page fixes it, but it also resets me back to the front page so I have to start over.

After a few loops through the various error screens, I discover that Microsoft Flight Simulator is not available here. That’s really strange. Microsoft gave it a trailer and presented it during their briefing. The company even advertised how the game would be part of Xbox Game Pass at launch. I can’t believe that it doesn’t even have a placeholder page with the release date.

I paid 10 times more than I expected and the service doesn’t even have what I want, but let’s see if I can find some other game to let me experience what the Xbox Game Pass has to offer. I tried to buy one of the Forza driving games back in 2016. It didn’t work out (twice). But it’s been two years and maybe Microsoft has gotten the bugs out of their system. Let’s try to get Forza Horizon 4, which is supposedly free now that I have Xbox Game Pass.

Except, the Forza Horizon 4 page doesn’t seem to recognize that I have the pass. The install button is disabled and it thinks I’m here to buy the game. It has a link to sell me the pass, even though I already have it. Also, the top of the page has an enormous screen-filling video that autoplays. That’s a bit rude, but even more unforgivable is that it’s really choppy. I scroll down quickly because the constant lurching is uncomfortable and distracting.

The page dies again. When I return it looks a little different:

image2.jpg


Now the install button is available, but it’s trying to get me to try a FREE 14-day trial of the game pass I just bought.

I try installing the game and I get:

image7.jpg


It tells me to “Sign in on a device.” But I have signed in! Twice! I signed in on the web page, and then I signed in again within the Windows 10 Store.

The link in that oversized error box doesn’t take me somewhere I can solve the problem. Instead it just dumps me in the help pages and leaves me to figure things out for myself. It’s not like I’m doing something exotic like trying to use my phone to install a game on my PC. I’m just trying to do a straightforward game download, like Steam has been doing since 2004. This isn’t complicated. If I’m on a desktop and I’m pushing the install button, then I’m probably trying to install the game on the computer in front of me. This is literally the most common thing that a user will want to do when they hit install. There’s no excuse for the system being this difficult.

I try to add this device to my account, but when I get to the page it looks like my device is already added and “everything looks good.”

image1.jpg


The computer on the left is the device I’m using right now. The one in the middle hasn’t existed in years, so it’s mildly alarming that Microsoft still remembers it. I’d stop to worry about how much of my personal data they’ve got lying around their database, but I’ve got bigger problems to deal with right now.

I navigate back to the Forza Horizon 4 page and it still claims I don’t have any devices. It’s still trying to sell me the game pass I’m already subscribed to. I click on the game pass link to see if it recognizes I already have it, and it gives me this:

image5.jpg


At the start, Microsoft promised over 100 games, one low monthly price.” But the price is either free, $1, $5, or $10 depending on which page I’m looking at. Since the entire store seems to be web-driven, it’s really annoying that I have to interface with it using the Windows 10 Store app instead of Chrome. It’s even more annoying that the system is so slow.

What I didn’t figure out until later in this adventure is that Microsoft has two different products: Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass PC Games. These products have nearly the same name, use the same branding and promotional images, and are sold from the same site. The interface seems to switch between the two freely and sometimes the PC stuff is incorrectly labeled. At the start, I clicked on the PC one, and then after signing in, the website took me to the non-PC one. Games are advertised as being available with the Game Pass without specifying which one. There’s nothing to clue the user in to the fact that there are two different kinds of passes! If you asked me to deliberately design a system to baffle and frustrate the user, I doubt I could do better than this.

Microsoft also has a standalone app. I imagine it’s like Steam, GoG, or the Epic Games Store. Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to be using. Maybe I’m being an idiot and trying to use the neglected Windows 10 Store when Game Pass was designed to work with the new desktop application.

I download the installer, run it, and get:

image4.jpg


If this system was built for human beings, then this error screen should explain why my computer “isn’t quite ready” to run Microsoft’s new gaming client. You might think that the “Learn More” button would be helpful, but it just sends you to a web page with a huge list of common PC problems that have nothing to do with Xbox gaming.

At this point, you might assume I’m running some horrible potato computer or an ancient version of Windows that hasn’t been updated. But my machine is brand new. I’ve got a liquid-cooled Intel Core i9-9900K processor with 32 GB of memory and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card which is also liquid cooled. If this beast can’t run Microsoft’s silly storefront app, then Microsoft has screwed up on a massive scale. This is a fresh install of Windows with all the latest suggested updates. I’ve got Steam, GoG, and the Epic Games Store on this machine, and they all work just fine. This machine is as ready as humanly possible.

The next excuse is to blame the user, but I didn’t try to do anything fancy. I did all of the obvious actions and didn’t mess around with multiple devices or linking different accounts together. I had one account, one machine, I went for the most obvious option on every page, and I accepted all the defaults.

One final excuse to make on Microsoft’s behalf is that their site was probably busy due to E3. That’s true, but that’s the test. If Microsoft can’t get a simple web-based store interface working, then Microsoft is not ready for cloud gaming. Cloud systems and servers are monumentally more complex than the quaint 2008-style storefront that just failed so spectacularly at so many different points. Cloud gaming servers need orders of magnitude more power. If their system buckles from a few thousand people hitting the storefront at once, how can the company possibly dream of jumping into gaming services hard mode with cloud gaming?

One final thing to add is that this isn’t an unfortunate one-off. This isn’t just a rough launch. This is a pattern of behavior that began with Games For Windows Live backin 2007 and continued to the Windows 10 Store in 2016 and now to the Game Pass service in 2019. Microsoft’s storefronts are always a snarl of broken technology with horrendous usability.

Microsoft, you have no business attempting to enter the cloud gaming market. Fix your other broken services before you launch something even larger and more ambitious. You’ve made enough of a mess already.
 

Turuko

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the sooner they uncouple the "new app" from the frankensteinish MS Store the better
if it's actually in the works that is :?
 

Markman

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Ye, it needs work. Alot of it.

Exodus is installed and when I try to start it wants to login to Xbox Live. How can I even start it from my already logged in Xbox app and then ask for another login when Im already logged in is a mystery. Then when I click change the acc and select the only one it logs me in and again starts the loop of asking for login. Cant even Alt-F4 it and got to end it from task manager. Piece of shit.

Rest of the games installed like Void Bastards, Halo Wars and Slay the Spire work like a charm. Its just Exodus that is a massive pain in the ass.
 

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