Xbox Game Pass is knocking it out of the park this month

digitaltrends.com:

If you spend a lot of time reading about video games on social media, you’ve probably seen this week’s instantly tiring discourse. It started with a couple of journalists harmlessly noting that they planned to unsubscribe from Xbox Game Pass for a bit, which escalated into a classic console war debate complete with angry fans on every side and brand clap backs.

Like much gaming discourse, it’s a distracting sideshow that’s not worth adding to (I’ve already said more than I care to about it here). But if you’ve come out of the conversation wondering if you’re really getting your money’s worth out of the service these days, there’s a detail that’s been unfortunately lost among the noise: Xbox Game Pass is having its best month of 2022 so far.

At first glance, that might sound like a contrarian take. Microsoft’s service is struggling this month after Bethesda announced it would be delaying both Starfield and Redfall out of 2022. That means there likely won’t be a single AAA Xbox first-party exclusive available day-and-date on the service this year. For those who subscribe primarily for that value proposition, it’s completely reasonable to dip out until the taps turn back on.

But the value of Game Pass has never really been its tentpole Xbox titles. They’ve always been few and far between, something that was especially clear when the Xbox Series X launched without a new killer app to sell it. Instead, the service has always been more valuable as a discovery platform for independent games that don’t always get the time of day in a busy release year. And with a quieter release schedule in the industry at large right now, Game Pass is currently leaning on that strength to great effect.

When it comes to new releases, there are