Head of Xbox Phil Spencer made a huge reveal a few days ago by announcing the Xbox Game Pass. It is a brand new subscription based service that would be fully arriving on Xbox One later this spring. Xbox Game Pass is a service that promises to make more than 100 different Xbox One and backwards compatible Xbox 360 titles available at a price of $9.99 per month.
The service will allow subscribers to pick any title in the program and download it straight to their console. As a bonus, subscribers to the program will also save 20% on games in it and 10% on all related downloadable content for games in the program.
The new service is first going to be tested by select members in the alpha preview section of Xbox's Insider Program.
Which publishers and games will be a part of the program?
In the announcement, it was also mentioned that some major publishers have already agreed to have their games be a part of the Xbox Game Pass service. Publishers like 2K, Capcom, Deep Silver and Sega were just some of the publishers mentioned by Microsoft as taking part.
It has already been confirmed that there are 21 games available to those in the alpha preview, with the most notable being Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and Sunset Overdrive. It was also confirmed by Microsoft at this year's Game Developers Conference (GDC) that games like Halo 5: Guardians and NBA 2K16 will be in the program.
At GDC Microsoft also stated that a handful of games will rotate in and out of the program on a monthly basis.
Will Xbox catch up to PlayStation 4?
Right when this new console generation started the PlayStation 4 has been ahead of the Xbox One in sales. Since the reveal of backwards compatibility for Xbox 360 games back in 2015 the Xbox One has seen steady improvement in sales.
Since then Microsoft has also revealed the Xbox One S and the extremely powerful Project Scorpio last year. Now with the announcement of the Xbox Game Pass, it is clear that Microsoft is doing what they can to try and catch up with Sony and its PlayStation 4.
