r/gaming • u/Force_Hammer • 17h ago

Microsoft to impose time limits on Xbox cloud gaming subscribers as costs continue to climb

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/03/microsoft-xbox-game-pass-cloud-limits.html
11.2k Upvotes

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4.3k

u/Oldbayislove 17h ago

“Users with high-end Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions, which cost $22.99 per month, will have access to 15 hours of cloud gaming. Game Pass Premium account holders, who pay $14.99 per month, will have 10 hours of cloud-based playtime, while Game Pass Essential, which costs $9.99 a month, includes five hours, according to the blog post.”

lol

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u/PromiscuousScoliosis PC 17h ago

15 hrs per what?? That can’t be per month right???

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u/JTalbotIV 17h ago

Oh it's per month. They really don't want xbox to succeed.

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u/OPMajoradidas 17h ago

Shitttt. That's like one days worth

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u/Jops817 17h ago

Yeah that's like, a Saturday free. That would stress me out making sure I am maximizing my time, better not idle at all, might even join the piss bottle meta over it because can't waste any time (jk, maybe).

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u/welzed11 16h ago

Wild that they have the audacity to limit it this much when their cloud gaming is worse then PlayStations. PS5 cloud gaming has 4k resolution which Xbox doesn’t, HDR which Xbox doesn’t, better image quality and less latency 

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u/TheWizardGeorge 16h ago

I mean honestly I pretty much never use it because of how much worse it is than both Playstation and GeForce now, despite having had(canceled earlier this year) game pass for so long.

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u/AdorableTuck 16h ago

I tried playing black ops zombies on pc last week end. I didnt want to make room on my HD so I tried it through the cloud. The blurriness during movement made it the worst experience. I've played POE2 and Destiny 2 on geforce now and they dont look that blurry.

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u/Jops817 16h ago

Yeah I've used it to try out a few games I was curious about but not buy the game curious. It was good for that but has outgrown its usefulness.

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u/tevert 16h ago

Gotta balance pissing against all those verification cans you have to drink

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u/Koolco 14h ago

Its so strange because other services don’t have caps on the total service, but do cap session times (geforce now has a cap of 8 hour sessions). It is wacky that they consider 4 hours a week the “premium” experience.

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u/DEVIL_LOCK PC 16h ago

Yeah the jrpg crowd isn't gonna like this one.

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u/iccs 17h ago

Im not saying 15 hours per month isn’t a pittance, but in one day? Jesus

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u/Deathdy 17h ago

Why, what's wrong? 15 hours of gaming. 2 hours of sleep. 1 hour of bathroom stuff. And uuh. 5 hours of gooning. The final hour is contemplating your life.

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u/Driftysilver 16h ago

That sounds like a great Saturday to me. What's the problem?

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u/Solid_Wind_3234 16h ago

Not enough gooning obviously

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u/OblivionJunkie 16h ago

The gooning/contemplating can be redistributed as needed

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u/Solid_Wind_3234 16h ago

Oh phew, that makes things better then!

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u/highersense 16h ago

You definitely never played classic WoW

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u/stone_magnet1 16h ago

Me at 6am: is that the sun???

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u/HungryDiscoGaurdian 16h ago

Me on a Tuesday: shit the servers are going down again?

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u/Telekinendo 14h ago

Me playing Crusader Kings: I'll just finish this war. I'll just plot this guys assassination. I'll just redo some laws. I'll just- why the fuck do I hear birds, its only like 11.

Its 11AM?!

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u/siggydude 16h ago

If you get 8 hours of sleep, you get 16 hours of being awake. If someone turns on their console first thing in the morning and has it on all day, it's easy to hit 15 hours of playtime. 15 hours a month for a subscription that costs that much is insanely low to me

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u/PMagicUK 16h ago

I work 12 hour shifts and audio book limits are hit in literally a shift and a bit.

15 hours is fuck all.

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u/thejokerlaughsatyou 15h ago

Does your local library have Libby? If so, it has free audiobooks with no time limits!

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u/_Ocean_Machine_ 14h ago

Back when I worked a 4/10 Libby was a lifesaver; I love music but I can't stand to listen to it for ten hours straight. And the one free book per month you get through an Audible sub is almost an insult.

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u/JoeVanWeedler 16h ago

I get 2-3 hours per day, more on weekends but this would cap me out after a week or less.

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u/ChristopherRobben 16h ago

That's probably just active game time too; you leave it sit on the pause screen for too long and you may have just wiped out a day.

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u/Jops817 16h ago

I wouldn't say that every day is healthy, but certain release days, or social/multiplayer games with things like raids and stuff like that, you can hit that mark pretty easy on occassion.

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u/[deleted] 17h ago

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u/MrWildspeaker 17h ago

That’s literally 30 minutes a day. Absolutely insane.

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u/A_Furious_Mind 16h ago

I watched a lot of infomercials in the 90s. In only 30 minutes a day you can:

  • Get abs

  • Jazzercise or Sweat to the Oldies

  • Shape your body with home resistance training

  • Learn a new language

  • Learn to speed read

  • Learn to play an instrument via CD-ROM instruction

  • Organize clutter

  • Meal prep

If it's enough time to do that, it's adequate time for gaming.

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u/QF_Dan 16h ago

Looks like Xbox and Sony are fighting to be the worst company again

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u/ChainsawVisionMan 16h ago

The new console wars are the race to the bottom.

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u/Buck-Stedman 10h ago

My thoughts exactly. A new console war for who can make the worst choices

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u/OblivionJunkie 16h ago

Always have been

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u/DR_BEANHAMMER 16h ago

That's insane. My wife and I are grown adults with full time jobs and a household to manage and we game roughly 2 hrs per day on weekdays and can put in 10ish hours on the weekends.

I am so glad I built a pc before prices shoehorned people into cloud gaming.

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u/OblivionJunkie 16h ago

Built mine in 21/22', gf built hers in 23/24'. We're very thankful lol

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u/DR_BEANHAMMER 16h ago

I am glad i mever listened to all the people saying to wait. "I'm just going to buy this 4070TIS instead of waiting for the 50 series, and get another 4gb nvme too" just in the nick of time. Most of the used stuff in my computer is worth way more than I payed for it.

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u/TopAcanthocephala271 16h ago

Nobody is shoehorned into cloud gaming. You can still download your games and gamepass games and play them locally. Are you doing your 2 hours of gaming on the cloud service? If not this doesn’t effect you at all.

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u/JTalbotIV 16h ago

I'm broke, but got into pc emulation on my phone fairly recently, and oh my word is it feeling timely.

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u/Suitable-Horse1630 13h ago

Yup. Pretty easy to put in 20+ hours of gaming a week (or any of your other favorite recreational activities) for any functional adult that's capable of taking care of themselves, and has basic time management skills.

Anyone stupid enough to fall for the cloud gaming scam deserves it at this point.

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u/fuckshitballscunt 13h ago

Right? I did a full upgrade to a 4080 and 64gb ram right before everything went to shit. Had been saving for months and timed it perfectly by blind luck

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u/CMDR_omnicognate 16h ago

Honestly I think this should be more telling on how the collapse of ai is coming. If they can’t sustain more than 15 hours per month of cloud gaming for $23 a month, imagine how much it’s costing for all the ai companies to generate images of minions getting crucified, or people on Twitter asking grok if the moon is real…

This speaks to a much bigger, more desperate problem for… well all of these companies I think.

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u/ruiner8850 16h ago

I bought a Firestick that came with a free month of Ultimate to stream and it was nice to have since I have never owned an Xbox and only have a PS4. I actually planned on getting another month or two during the winter when I'd have more time to play. This announcement has ended any thought of that.

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u/Christmas_Queef 16h ago

Wtf Nvidia geforce now cloud streaming service gives 100 hours a month and even that isn't enough for active gamers lol.

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u/sahneeis 16h ago

well its not succeeding because this cloud gaming shit is not making money and they cannot throw all that shit into the bin

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u/Zwischenzug32 16h ago

Oops i left it on pause

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u/coby_of_astora 16h ago

I've really never seen a company punch themselves in the dick with a smile as much as Microsoft does. That said, I have pc game pass bc value is good and I get to try a lot of indie titles before I buy them and I've never used cloud gaming.

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u/Psyco19 16h ago

15 hours a month is dog shit, I get that in 1.5 days these days and that’s with a kid when she’s off to bed I’m playing games once chores are done

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u/Cute-arii 16h ago

Wow, that's sucky. Even the FREE tier for GeForce Now is better than that. 100 hours a month.

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u/AeroDbladE 16h ago

I'm right there with them. I hope xbox cloud loses as much money as possible.

This kind of shitty mobile data ass business model should not become mainstream.

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u/Kempeth 15h ago

Microsoft and ruining their gaming service.

Name a more iconic duo

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u/Paco-49 15h ago

Damn, that's 2$ per hour. My Framework has already paid off at this point.

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u/ThriceFive 15h ago

Guaranteed to snap off when you are at the end of a big multi hour raid or on the Bosses third and final life

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u/MrBeanWater 15h ago

If they they think their losing money now, just wait till the mass cancelling of game pass tanks their stock again.

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u/DarXIV 14h ago

But I was told the CEO was bringing back the Xbox golden age!

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u/thegta5p 13h ago

That’s the death of xcloud. GeForce now gets you unlimited play sessions for 10 bucks a month.

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u/Razbyte 11h ago

Pretty sure thats their intention. It was pretty obvious that Game Pass is killing the xbox, so they are trying hard to make the hemorrhagic features less appealing.

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u/Neirchill 9h ago

Everytime they do something that appears to be in the right direction they do something like this. I think they literally have a team of people throw out brainstorming ideas and they close which ones to pursue based on throwing a dart while blindfolded.

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u/WorthPlease 17h ago

First thing I thought, huh that's gotta be like 15 hours a day right? Couldn't be a week.....holy shit.

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u/yung_dogie 16h ago

15 a day would be reasonable, that's definitely one of those situations where you're thinking "well, this is an edge case that I should've thought of but isn't really what I had in mind" like if someone stayed 8 hrs at a McDonalds constantly refilling one drink cup or something

But 15 for any other typical unit of billing time above per day is pretty damn silly

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u/DidYouPayForWinrar 13h ago

I could see 15 a week being reasonable for some people. Even something like 4 hours per day would be reasonable for a lot of people especially if they let hours roll over.

15 a month though lol?

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u/NooneKnowsIAmBatman 10h ago

15 per week isn't top tier billing quantity. That's a lower tier number, a realistic top tier weekly would be over 40 per week

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u/jormugandr 14h ago

Right. Or people who just leave the cloud stream on 24/7 because they can. I can see wanting a limit so they eventually get disconnected.

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u/shankartz 14h ago

Who's gaming 15 hours a day?

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u/WorthPlease 14h ago

I was thinking it was a weird case where people were sharing an Xbox and between them using it all day and night

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u/Zalvren 13h ago

I mean 15 hours a day would be a useless limit, might as well not have one, the amount of people that pass that is basically so small that it doesn't matter

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u/Mr_Industrial 16h ago

$22 for 15 hrs? Might as well just go to an arcade at that point.

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u/_Ocean_Machine_ 14h ago

Shit, an arcade would be better because then you can at least get out of the house and hang out with friends.

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u/PromiscuousScoliosis PC 16h ago

Oh look, pre-9/11 arcade prices

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u/ll30yd 17h ago

It's OK, you can buy more

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u/LezDoTheBoogerWooger 17h ago

Wait until "the 15 hours per month are supported by ads. Do you want more? It's 2.99 per hour with ads, 3.99 without ads! PLAY MORE!"

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u/49e-rm 16h ago

PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN TO CONTINUE

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u/letsgotgoing 17h ago

I guess in the infancy of the all-digital future, I'll buy games from GOG.com to own my digital games without DRM, and, of course, physical versions of retro titles.

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u/PsyOmega PC 16h ago

One day it'll get so bad there'll be roving bands of feral gamers, breaking into corporate offices to steal the last remaining PC's capable of running independent operating systems and local rendering. Sure it'll be intel HD gpu, but everyone will still be playing cs2 and fortnight anyway

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u/jormugandr 14h ago

Make sure you keep good care of your current PC. They're doing all they can to price the average gamer out of PC affordability. Those GOG games won't do much good if you need to spend 5k on a new PC.

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u/fozzy_bear42 17h ago

They one day the drop the ‘L’ from the motto and say what we’ve all been thinking.

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u/Cachar 15h ago

Currently they don't want you to play more. Microsoft wants to lend OpenAI money, so OpenAI can buy GPU compute from Microsoft. 

I wish I was joking.

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u/LezDoTheBoogerWooger 13h ago

Next Xbox pad will have copilot button in the middle. 

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u/jonstarks 16h ago

they just love stepping on rakes

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u/x_Animus_x 16h ago

It directly states in the article they plan to test ad supported streaming.

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u/LilStrug 16h ago

This made me think of the meme video with kid waking up in the middle of the night to the TV ad of the guy asking,’ hey punk, wanna talk some shit? Call me now, let’s start some shit.‘

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u/TwoMoreMinutes 16h ago

“DRINK VERIFICATION CAN TO CONTINUE”

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u/PhotonBarbeque 17h ago

I could at the arcade too. Then I bought a computer for home. Now I’m… paying to use it by the hour to stream a game in from outside my home…???

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u/GokuBlack722 17h ago

If you have a computer why are you streaming these games to it instead of running them natively

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u/frogguts198 17h ago

He didnt say he had a good computer.

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u/DatedReference1 17h ago

Article says they did not specify fees for more hours. I'm sure it's coming but they're waiting to see how unpopular this is before they give a price.

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u/S31Ender 5h ago

We know the base minimum at least.

22 dollars for ultimate at 15 hours and 15 dollars one tier down at 10 hours is 7 bucks.

15 for 10hours and 10 for 5 hours is 5 bucks.

So an hour is worth at a bare minimum, one dollar.

Eff that.

We know what this really is.

“There will be a new addon package for 7 dollars per month to give unlimited cloud streaming.”

And now we’re back to 30 dollar true ultimate.

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u/Hartia 17h ago

wow....15 hrs is like something i'd use in a few days. if Sony does this too, the portal is practically useless as my main portable while ps5 is off. There goes any hopes ps4 game streaming would come to the device.

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u/JimmyDejesu 17h ago

I feel like Im having dejavu.

warned people against going all digital now its inevitable.

for the love of god dont encourage cloud/streaming games, its a stupid idea

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u/Endure94 16h ago

Selfhosted game streaming? Hell yeah.

Corpo game streaming? Hell nah.

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u/Stahlreck 15h ago

tbf I have a feeling demand for this would be rising because of current hardware prices so...nothing selfhosted can fix really.

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u/ExtremePrivilege 16h ago

The plan is that hardware becomes too expensive for the average consumer. A $13,000 PS6 or a $25,000 gaming PC to run anything remotely modern. At that point the vast majority of gamers will require cloud gaming and the subscriptions that go along with it.

Thats where we’re headed. The question is how long it will take to get there.

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u/PromiscuousScoliosis PC 16h ago

Then once you have your captives, jack those prices up higher bby

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u/dfddfsaadaafdssa 16h ago edited 16h ago

The upcoming generation. I would be surprised if Sony isn't already designing a thin client version of the PS6. They will probably call it the PS6 Lite or some shit. Manufacturing costs are simply too high and there is enough money on the table to justify its existence.

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u/Fantasy_masterMC 16h ago

It's effectively $1.2 per hour of gaming. I don't know what the fuck they're doing, but if this is legitimately the price of cloud gaming even now, with modern technology, the concept is doomed (not that I mind).

More likely they're trying to see how much of the infrastructure they can repurpose for AI while still gouging their customers for as much as possible, or they have some other excuse for a massive price increase that doesn't actually reflect their costs.

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u/DrAstralis 16h ago

At 15 hours a month I'd now be scared to even leave a game on to go to the bathroom. Why would anyone pay for something this anti consumer?

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u/RRR3000 15h ago

You get 100 hours per month on the free tier of GeforceNow. Insane to limit it to 15 hours for the most expensive Gamepass tier.

Honestly a better deal to connect them and play your Gamepass titles on GFN, quality is better too imo (but will depend on your location/distance to a datacenter).

Maybe that's the idea though, move people away from xCloud so they can repurpose their own datacenters for AI and offload the streaming costs to others.

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u/RamboMcMutNutts 12h ago

Throw in the factor that a lot of games are padded out and don't respect player time at all.

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u/ZebraSandwich4Lyf 17h ago

15 hours per MONTH??? Lol, lmao even.

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u/Mrevilman 16h ago

WTF am I supposed to do with the other 30 days in the month?

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u/TransplantedSconie 16h ago

Watch an AI generated video featuring someone playing a game that you want to play.

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u/_Ocean_Machine_ 14h ago

No, you have the AI watch the video for you while you toil away at work.

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u/Njoybeing 13h ago

... While watching ads every 2.5 minutes

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u/XiMaoJingPing 17h ago

Saw so many posts about gamers claiming that corpos want to take away their pcs and force them on the cloud.

Like no they don't give a fuck about gamers, they want to use every resource they can for AI datacenters.

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u/TheDrewDude 16h ago

Greed is a cancer. They would literally suck up every last resource from humanity until we all went extinct.

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u/JeanLucPicardAND 16h ago

Bro, they are.

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u/Careidina 16h ago

That's the idea. Rules and regulations stopped them. Once those are gone, then there isn't much else to stop them. Humans always needed an outside source to save us from ourselves as we're our own worst enemy.

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u/IAmTheJudasTree 14h ago

I like how gamers are slowly rediscovering why things like government regulations over greedy corporations, progressive taxation/taxing the super wealthy, etc are not just good in general but a necessity for a functioning society that doesn't just consist of a tiny handful of the uber wealthy ruling over all of us and grinding us into dust.

I hope the right-wing, gamergater-types realize they've been duped by conservative cultural propaganda into supporting politicians/political parties who have been gradually feeding them into a woodchipper.

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u/mouse_8b 16h ago

Corpos do want to take away your PC and force you to the cloud.

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u/Cog_HS 13h ago

Yes, and then pay for it by the minute. With ads. Unless you pay for the ad free tier.

Just kidding.

There will be no ad free tier.

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u/janas19 16h ago

Why can't they do both?

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u/ubitub 16h ago

worth a lmfao, tbh

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u/pepcorn 17h ago

Per MONTH. 

Hilariously awful offering. If they can't afford to offer cloud based services, then GO BACK TO SELLING PHYSICAL MEDIA INSTEAD.

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u/JimmyDejesu 17h ago

This seems obvious doesnt it lol. And yet

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u/pepcorn 17h ago

They don't like solutions where they can't trap their customers into giving them money for barely-a-service forever.

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u/TheDrewDude 16h ago

And yet they would sooner destroy their own company then give ownership to their customers. Fucking joke.

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u/Remnant_Echo 16h ago

Also notice the note: "Players will be able to pay for additional hours beyond the caps"

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u/pepcorn 16h ago

Basically trying to milk their most dedicated users for more money.

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u/Mauamu PlayStation 15h ago

I don't think you need to be one of the "most dedicated users" to hit those caps in a month to be honest.

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u/pepcorn 13h ago

Yeah, you're right.

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u/PrivilegeCheckmate 12h ago

And yet

That would be LEAVING MONEY ON THE TABLE!!!

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u/Little_Obligation_90 17h ago

They want their cloud servers used for AI and Azure. Not poor gamers.

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u/HeadintheSand69 16h ago

My company insisted I use ADF for some bullshit and it priced out to like 100k/yr. When you consider how much they make compute cost, cloud gaming just cant compete.

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u/EIiteJT PC 16h ago

But they want you paying them all the time. They don't like the one time payment. They want to milk you.

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u/Big-Cartographer-166 16h ago

And miss the oportunity for charging you per hour?

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u/pepcorn 16h ago

It makes me so happy that people have grown sick of subscription services and are slowly abandoning them.

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u/Ickyfist 17h ago

Just get rid of cloud gaming at that point. It's clearly not worth the cost.

At the very least they should remove cloud gaming from game pass. Most people don't use or want it. You could also lower game pass prices or improve the service.

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u/ScottyBOzzy 16h ago

It's the only thing I use. Hockey and Baseball and NCAA games do not exist on PC. I only use gamepass for sports games. Seems I'm going to unsub, though.

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u/Ballwhacker 16h ago

NCAA is now on PC.

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u/ScottyBOzzy 13h ago

That made my day. Thanks.

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u/GoodLunchHaveFries 16h ago

I just want to play The Show on my PC😭

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u/PaulSach 15h ago

Yeah, xCloud was my only lifeline to playing the NHL games with some of my friends and cousins. Guess I won't be able to really do that anymore :/ (I'm not gonna buy a PS5 just to play sports games lol)

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u/yzeerf1313 16h ago

Unless they are planning on offering an unlimited tier they effectively are with this change.

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u/savedawhale 13h ago

All they have to do is get rid of physical media, increase the price of digital games to crazy prices, and limit access by subscription tier. Hardware will be too expensive because they've banned Chinese products (consumer products as national military threat) that would keep costs down, so unless you plan to climb the corporate later, you'll take what you can get.

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u/KnightKal 17h ago

they are beating having a gaming device will be too expensive, so people will be happy paying $1 to $2/hour to rent the device instead, no? Something in that order.

better keep your PC/device safe :D, they are coming for it

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u/Demonchaser27 17h ago

Yeah... this shit is what I've been talking about to friends and some other subs when they say "everything is going to move to cloud". When even Game Pass (the model where you can just download the games so bandwidth cost is much lower) isn't affordable for one of the largest tech companies in the world, how in the fuck is cloud streaming going to be viable for them?

Nevermind that if density increased, wait times would be ridiculous, they'd start doing system sharing between users (one machine runs multiple games) which will absolutely fuck frame pacing and input latency. The whole thing is a complete and total mess... and they can't even afford to offer ONE hour of gaming per day. And even if they could offer just that one hour, that would not be anywhere near worth the money.

Companies couldn't do this shit when hardware was more affordable, but now? No... we're not likely to move to streaming just because hardware prices are outrageous... We're not the only ones who'd have to pay those outrageous prices, so do the companies trying to host cloud services. And then they have to somehow charge you more than what you used to pay for unlimited use hardware... when people couldn't even hardly afford that. None of the numbers add up.

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u/Mammoth_Park7184 16h ago edited 16h ago

It's what I've been on at work about over reliance on ai including copilot. Microsoft are going to suddenly rug pull and wack restrictive limits on token usage until you pay through the nose now theyve got you addicted. 

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u/UnrealRealityX 16h ago

That's always been the end goal, and why I've been living and teaching my family to not rely on these types of services and to have things run locally as much as realistically possible, because the rugs, they are gonna fly once daddy shareholder wants more money from a rock.

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u/IAmTheJudasTree 14h ago

It's interesting being old enough now (I'm 36) to have gone through the lifecyle of a new product/service/technology, so I could experience first hand when it was first launched and got popular and was at its peak in terms of what it offered customers, before being gradually enshittified to squeeze more and more money out of users.

Like I remember the very early days of Youtube there were no ads or very, very few. I remember the early days of Facebook when your Facebook feed was just your friends, not jam packed with sponsored ads, accounts the algo thinks you might like, random AI slop accounts, etc. making it entirely unusable. I remember the early streaming days of Netflix, Hulu, etc. when prices were cheap, nothing had ads, you could share passwords as much as you like - now that's all a thing of the past. I could go on.

Now that I've lived through that pattern, from the first moment I used ChatGPT I said "this, right now, is the friendliest this platform will ever be to me, the consumer. From here on out, it will gradually get more expensive, it will gradually have ads shoved into it, it will gradually get worse in ways I can't even conceive of right now, etc." And lo and behold, last time I logged in to use ChatGPT, there are now ads inserted. It's only going to get worse and worse.

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u/UnrealRealityX 13h ago

You're spot on, and I'm a bit older, but fully went through exactly what you're saying with all those services.

To think, we used to complain about flash ads, and little rectangle banners the size of postage stamps. Now I yearn for those days of simple non-targeted ads! :)

The death of software is also all these SAAS websites where to use anything you have to create an account and use their servers for your personal data. It's why I try to find any locally run and built apps and try to self-host as much as I can. Invoicing, video streaming, CalDav for calendar/contacts, RSS feeds, project tracking, etc. They still exist, and they might not look pretty, but they sure are functional and not taking us for a ride.

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u/Demonchaser27 8h ago

Yeah, they've already been doing it. Several AI services now went from free to heavily limited, and other have heavily reduced tokens. So basically agreed. Shit is completely unsustainable.

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u/x_scion_x 17h ago

Lol, if that's hours per month that's pitifully low for all tiers.

Not even an hour a day per month, barely 1 hr a day for half a month at ultimate tier.

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u/nohumanape 17h ago

That is a near worthless amount of time for anyone who plays games with any regularity. And wouldn't a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber be someone who likely games more frequently?

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u/noahcallaway-wa 17h ago

Or, if it doesn't have aggressive idle detection, that 5 hours/month gets eaten up pretty quick with just a few of "I put down the controller because of a crying baby and didn't come back for a bit".

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u/nohumanape 17h ago

True. I didn't even think of that.

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u/Siphyre 15h ago

Or even just falling asleep while playing. It gets left on the entire night running in circles and bam, no more time.

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u/Dbrise 12h ago

And what about time spent in a lobby if you play fps games, sometimes it takes forever to find a game

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u/PhotonBarbeque 17h ago

Yeah, it’s over. What a shit service. Just shut it down!

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u/LezDoTheBoogerWooger 17h ago

Per month? So I pay 23$ per month and NOT have one hour of gaming per day? What happens if I have a normal adult life and I need to pause or disconnect frequently? Do loading times count? Give me back disks and games I ****ing own please.  It's PLAY time, not "let me check if I have enough time to exploit successfully the time I bought with my subscription" play time.  Gosh. 

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u/zilyzal 17h ago

No way this is per month. Most be per day, right?

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u/LezDoTheBoogerWooger 17h ago

I mean, 15 hours per day would sound very strange. Not impossible, but strange. That ai-written article doesn't explain much. 

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u/CocodaMonkey 12h ago

15 hours a day doesn't sound strange to me. That would be trying to get people to stop wasting their resources idling in a game which I'm sure a ton of people do. That would just be trying to limit their costs while still being consumer friendly.

Of course at 15 hours a month it makes the entire service a joke. The cost per hour of gaming is going to be way more expensive to stream vs own a PC unless you don't game much at all.

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u/AreYouNormal1 17h ago

At least you'd be encouraged to get some sleep.

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u/madmofo145 17h ago

There is no way they'd consider a 15 hour a day limit to even be a limit. Perhaps it's a per week, but implication is very much that it's a monthly limit.

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u/zilyzal 17h ago

Limiting per week is weird. It's usually either per month or per day. I think free tier had a daily limit if i remember currectly.

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u/Dry_Philosopher_1284 17h ago

It’s per month. They’re so fucking greedy, because they haven’t even announced how much it would cost to extend those restrictions. They’re quick to make their service shittier without deciding on the details.

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u/Zolo49 PC 17h ago edited 15h ago

Has to be. If it was per month, they might as well just cancel it. I’ll wait until there’s a clarification before saying more. If it actually does turn out to be per month? LMAO

[Edit: I’m seeing other articles out now confirming it’s per month. What a colossally stupid decision.]

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u/klingma 16h ago

It's per month per the article's first sentence. 

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u/Zolo49 PC 15h ago

You know, I actually did read the article. I guess my brain just skipped over that. Charging $23 for just 15 hours of game time feels so completely unbelievable.

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u/bman123457 16h ago

Im hoping this is maybe per week at least. The article is terrible. Per day makes this a total non issue. Per week would even make it a non issue for most.

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u/iusedtohavepowers 16h ago

This is like Spotify with audio books. They just casually drop the most garbage limitations on a service that highly restrict usage and then seem baffled by a lack of uptake.

I listened to the limit on Spotify ONCE and then realized how it worked and just went of I won’t ever use that at all and I damn sure won’t add fucking minutes to it.

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u/amillstone 17h ago

Holy shit, only 15 hours? When I read the headline, I thought they'd cap it at 100 hours like GeForce Now. But 15 hours per month at the highest tier? That's crazy. Especially since it wasn't that long ago that they claimed everything is an Xbox and tried to push players towards cloud gaming.

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u/SaintMortichai 15h ago

EXACTLY, everything is an Xbox, but we don't want you cloud streaming. Make it make sense!

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u/Saturn_winter 16h ago

I dont do cloud gaming so I dont have a dog in this race, but if thats the model they need for it to be sustainable or profitable, then cloud gaming as a whole probably just isn't sustainable or profitable. Imagine if Netflix came out and said they have to limit watch time to 10 hours.

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u/ohlookahipster 17h ago

FIVE HOURS PER MONTH????

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u/Remnant_Echo 16h ago

"Players will be able to pay for additional hours beyond the caps"

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u/Mr_Industrial 16h ago

Hey now, thats 10 whole minutes a day! You can do half a game of tetris with time like that.

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u/Magickarpet76 15h ago

Just put a damn coin slot on the thing at this point because it might as well be proprietary arcade cabinet in your living room.

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u/PetalumaPegleg 17h ago

Per month??????? 5 hours a month????? Gtafoh. This can't be serious

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u/decoy777 16h ago

Uh 15 hours a month???? Um yeah might as well just remove it at this point. I don't use it. But those that do probably use it way more than 15 hours. And those that don't use it don't care about it.

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u/Dramatic-Recipe5581 10h ago

I dont have a console so I have to cloud game. I play a fuck ton more than 15 hours a month. I just canceled my sub. Thankfully I just finished my main game I was playing, but not the other one. I'm absolutely fuming.

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u/HoboSkid 17h ago

The future of console gaming? Move all these game passes to a cloud model, then limit the time to cut costs while also still charging the same. I'm sure Sony is watching this move closely for PS plus.

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u/KyRoZ37 16h ago

What a joke. Most people simply are not about to pay $22.99 a month for 15 hours of gaming. If that's the case, their service is pretty much dead. I can't imagine anyone paying that kind of money.

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u/TheRedEarl 16h ago

Xbox is dead in the water. Was hoping to see it turn around but.. man lol. Maybe they needed a reason to kill off the cloud stuff so they’re making it bad on purpose? Idk anymore.

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u/Lostedge1983 17h ago

Do any of then even own a console? They cant be that dumb

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u/colecast 16h ago

Well that makes it easy, I simply won’t be subscribing.

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u/Googoo123450 16h ago

Per month?! Hahaha. This technology they were pushing as the future is again being treated like a novelty. I have two kids and I don't touch games until they're in bed and even I game more than 15 hours a month.

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u/BemaJinn 16h ago

One step forward (disk to digital), 20 steps back.

That's why I ditched Xbox and Microsoft completely. They're losing consumer faith at an incredible pace.

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u/notthatguypal6900 16h ago

Who plays games for less than 15 hours a month? Not gamers.

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u/Foto_synthesis 17h ago

Are they looking to kill Gamepass? Cause that's how they can kill Gamepass.

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u/TheWeinerThief 17h ago

Cloud doesn't work for more than 5 mins per attempt anyway

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u/IamBatDude 17h ago

5 hours A MONTH. HA!! laughable.

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u/Limp-Particular1451 17h ago

15 hours per month 😂

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u/Waldsman 17h ago

Thats insane

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u/tesfabpel 17h ago

They most surely need to allocate those GPUs to AI tasks so they limit what it can be limited...

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u/twinflxwer 16h ago

What the fuck? Lmao

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u/mrwynd 16h ago

If they wanted this to fail they could just shut down the service. This is just extra steps.

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u/Admirable_Zombie5245 16h ago

For just 8$ more you can just move on to GeForce now Ultimate which gives you a 5080 with 5K/120HZ support and Xbox PC Game pass combined lol

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u/CrispFreshley 16h ago

Oh hellllll no

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u/QF_Dan 16h ago

Per Month? FUCK SAKE!

This is literally like mobile data topup

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u/avatrox PC 16h ago

Gentlemen, hoist the colors. 🏴‍☠️

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u/The_R4ke 16h ago

$1.5 an hour is crazy work. At least this means cloud gaming as a concept is likely dead.

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u/mygutsaysmaybe 16h ago

So basically China’s 3h per child per week law, but adults need to pay for the premium package not to have less than that.

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u/BillyBean11111 16h ago

I spit out my coffee at how ridiciouls 15 hours per week is and then realized it's PER MONTH.

LMAO even.

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u/Apexnanoman 15h ago

I don't play video games half the month.  But I work 8 days on and 6 off for my job.

Those 16 days a month I'm in a hotel room pretty far from home. When I get off work at the end of each day I go in play video games. 

2-5 hrs a day depending on If we have worked late or not. 15 hours a month? Give me a fucking break. I'd do double or triple that in a month easily. 

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