Subscriptions (Patreon)

Xbox Game Pass. Playstation Now. EA Play. Uplay Plus. Humble Choice. Apple Arcade. Google Play Pass. GeForce Now. Prime Gaming. Utomik (?). Netflix. Amazon Prime. Hulu. Disney PLus. YouTube TV. HBO Max. Sling TV. Crunchyroll. Apple TV. Apple Music. Amazon Music. Youtube Music. Spotify. Napster.

..No seroiusly, Napster.

The world many predicted years ago has finally arrived, the subscription era. In an age where Hardware Ubiquity has virtually eliminated technical exclusivity, companies gotta find another way of getting people's regular payments.

And on the surface, this ain't bad at all. It encourages competition for people's value, and companies are currently doing quite a lot to convince people of their value, in many cases, using each other as benefits. Xbox Game Pass has been including EA Play in their Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions, and giving free trials of Crunchyroll, Youtube Premium, and Disney+.

I personally can't help but see the irony of a gaming subscription offering television subscriptions to compel me to a gaming service, and recently poked fun at on Twitter for exactly that, but I deleted it because people were reframing this poke as "complaining about free stuff."

This to me is the main temptation of subscriptions and why they're so effective. When you're spending $10 a month so consistently you don't even notice the payment on every 1st of the month, that's exactly what you see bonus' as...

"Free."

Not only are these Trials paired to a product you're paying for, there's also the fact the low cost and frequency of subscription is a main part of how these services pray on people. You don't use a Trial of this Disney+ and then are prevented from continuing, almost always these services are attached to your credit card and set to automatically renew the subscription when that Trial's run its course.

It's on people to save the money, and people are generally too busy in their lives to dedicate time to logging into a website, scrolling through 4-6 pages to find their payments, and end the subscription to save $10 a month.

When I see Crunchyroll, Youtube Premium, or Disney+ on Xbox Game Pass, I don't see a free add-on, I see an entirely separate service unrelated to what I'm currently paying for that I likely won't need beyond the month that trial exists, and more specifically, yet another thing I need to keep track of and end payments on, in a world where I'm already doing that for dozens of software and services.

For now, Subscriptions are okay. Xbox Game Pass is a really good deal for most people, and there are benefits, such as broadening people's taste in games with the ability to try anything they see, but as time goes on, these things are going to get more expensive, they're going to get more exclusives, and they're going to get more intrusive. I say this, because it's already happening, as an Adobe user, I'm very well versed in paying money for a service that's getting worse and more expensive.

See y'all in the future where you get a free 1 Month MandaloreGaming Trial for your Raycevick Prime Subscription and a 10% Discount coupon for Napster.