Xbox All Access[1] is Microsoft's attempt at bringing smartphone contract plans in the US to its Xbox One family of consoles. Rumoured[2] to be in the works, it was officially announced this week[3]. During this episode of Transition, we discuss the merits and demerits of Xbox All Access, which aside from an Xbox One S or X, also comes with Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass. It's an extremely competitive offer, and while it's exclusive to the US for now, we wonder on the possibilities of it coming to India, which if it shows up according to direct conversion, works out to around Rs. 80 a day for an Xbox One X with the aforementioned services.
We also talk about why Xbox All Access may not be a great fit for Microsoft, the chance of theft and misuse, and how this could impact game developers and publishers, some of whom have extremely strong opinions on the subscription business model.
Furthermore, we also speculate on the possibility of Sony and Nintendo prepping their Xbox All Access rival. Considering Sony actually has an enviable roster of exclusives and actively develops its own games, it's unlikely that it would consider such a move. More so when the likes of God of War and Uncharted 4 selling as strong as they do.
Nintendo on the other hand, has yet to come to terms with how online services work in 2018 (hint: they don't have developers making their own voice chat APIs like Epic had to for Fortnite on the Switch) so it would be interesting to see if either decide to go down the route of Xbox All Access.
You can subscribe to Transition[4] via Apple...