Game Pass sounds great, but the average game play time is ~2 weeks. You're paying $240–480/year to skim the surface of multiple games.

That's a lot for what is essentially a demo experience. There are better ways to approach gaming.

Get a Steam Deck? You can hook it up like a PC, use it sat around. Though its not a powerhouse. Wait and see how the Steam Machine fairs? There's still a good second hand market for parts too.

Its a shitty time at the moment with scumbag companies and AI, so consumers are completely fucked.

Also: Fuck subscriptions.
Plus the game pass versions of games are complete dogshit compared to the Steam versions most of the time.

Check Craigslist, FB Marketplace, Letgo--just general classifieds. Can generally find decent deals on 1 to 2 generation old PCs, especially if you're near a US Military installation or college.

Edit: just checked Boulder's CL--10700k, 3080, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and 850w PSU and a 27in, 1440p, IPS Monitor for $1000

I'm not. You can still buy valid 12 month Xbox Live Gold subscriptions for under £40, close to the £36 before Game Pass took over. Fuck the new price. The Gold codes translate to Game Pass Core. But if you want Ultimate, well don't let me get between your lips and Microsoft's expensive arsehole

Here's an idea that won't cost anything: Browser games! There are tons of great Incremental games playable for free on a browser, and plenty of other games too.

I've consistently refused to buy in to Game Pass. I still buy physical games where available. If it's only digital, I'll get the Steam version for my Steam Deck.

The moment Game Pass wouldn't let me cheese the system and get it for like $1-2 a month, I quit bothering with it. I knew they were trying to get people hooked and raise prices. It was only like a year later and then even my friends canceled theirs.

I buy games heavily on sale, or sail the seas.

Luckily my gaming PC is more than good enough to ride out the next 5 years. knocks on wood. 5800X3D + 6800 XT.

For anyone else cross your fingers the GabeCube isn't too expensive $$$.

I downgraded to the lowest tier, so technically they lost money on me.

Have a look at the Heroic Launcher. I remember reading it included a feature to play some Windows games in compatibility mode or something?

Apart from that I guess it's Geforce Now, Amazon Luna etc...

By not?

I don't know you, but I have more games in my library than gaming hours in a month. I haven't touched anything released in the past three years, and mostly replay older games and emulators. The entire PS1 and PS2 library, as well as Nintendo 64, GBA, DS, etc... can be played on your fridge, and you can pirate those games for free, or buy their remasters (if they's any) for cheap.

Never paid a subscription in the first place.

That's the old price. GamePass Ultimate went up briefly from $14.99 to $19.99 then doubled (from its original price) to $29.99 per month.

I got locked in at the original price. Better yet, I got the GamePass All Access deal right before it went away. That gets you the $500 Xbox Series X and 2 years of GamePass Ultimate for about 35 bucks a month. If you consider GPU to be $15 a month, that pushes the Xbox down to $480. Not a bad deal at all! You get the Xbox and a 24-month code straight up and make payments (it's a credit card with 0% interest for that purchase, so you have to qualify for it). That's why I have an XSX and not a PS5 like I would have liked. I couldn't come up with $500 straight up for a PS5, but I could make $35 a month for 2 years plus I got GamePass.

I still game on my Xbox (I'm a Mac user on computers — we got Cyberpunk and Blue Prince last year, and I own both on Steam, but they play better on my Xbox). I just buy games on sale. I got the Mass Effect Legendary Edition (remaster of the Shepard trilogy) for $6. That sale is still on. They also have Mass Effect 4 for $3 (or $4 for Deluxe) and the first one (OG 360 version) for $5. Bought all of it. Love those games. I got Hogwarts Legacy for $10. That nasty trans-hating Harry Potter author didn't have any input in the game and in fact it has a bunch of gay couples and a trans character to spite her. I really don't like her views and avoided the game for a couple years, but I'm hooked. I love flying around and exploring the castle. I also play Switch games. Those tend to last longer than PC/Xbox games. My wife got Animal Crossing last year and burned out after a couple weeks. I still check in on my island a few times a week. It's honestly a lovely game.

I don't know what I can tell you.

I'm one of those patient gamers, where I'm just happy I finally have a machine that can play about 89% of the games I have to throw at it. Moreso happier that it can confidently run PS2 emulation, something I've been chasing for years to have a machine that can do, to own anyways.

I think you just need to sit down and contemplate to yourself what you want out of a machine. It's not a good healthy mindset to be fretting about upgrading all of the time. I mean, you made a huge leap already going from 15 years to what you have now.

Also consider that, there will still be games released that look graphically demanding and everything, but will require maybe a 1060 GPU, just as an example. Probably 8GB of RAM. It's only the AAA stuff that wants everything to be tip-top shape. Don't chase those.

Not sure what to tell you, but a Mac is the last platform to go to for gaming. Apple has zero interest in gaming and have made the platform virtually hostile to gaming development.

Steam regularly has sales (really good sales, like under $5) for fairly modern games (within the last 10 years).

Wait for a sale on something like an AMD Beelink and use that.

Wasn't Game Pass like $6/mo on PC not too long ago? Who's paying $20 for this crap? The game selection isn't even that good.

Um... you need to sell that Mac and build a computer with DDR4 and maybe a 40 Series NVIDIA GPU (so as to not pay the high prices on both fronts), slap Linux on it (I'd recommend Mint or Pop_OS!), and learn how to set it up for gaming. That's stupid otherwise.