I remember when Uplay+ was first announced… I threw it some serious sideeye. Why would anyone pay for a subscription service to play games that regularly go on seriously deep discount sales? Now I stand on the precipice of partaking of it myself and have a slightly different perspective. At that point there really wasn’t much that I wanted to play from UbiSoft that I did not already own, or could not purchase easily. Now we are in a time of gold and ultimate edition games that double the price of entry if you so choose to partake, and also on the cusp of a banner sequence of game releases from the studio.
Over the coming months I want to play the following:
- Watch Dogs Legion – Available Today – $120 for the Ultimate Edition
- Asssassin’s Creed Valhalla – November 10th – $120 for the Ultimate Edition
- Immortals Fenyx Rising – December 3rd – $100 for the Gold Edition
- Farcry 6 – February 18th – $120 for the ultimate edition
My natural instinct tends to be to go for that ultimate edition so that I don’t have buyers remorse later when there is some shiny doodad or thingamabob that I don’t have access to. I know it is a bad habit and a first world problem but it is a thing for me at least. Were I to stack up all of those games in the highest version I would be dropping $460 over the course of the next several months… or to put that into perspective almost the cost of a RTX 3070 graphics card.
This morning I stared down the barrel of the Uplay page trying to decide what I wanted to do. I want to play Watch Dog Legions, but did I want to go ahead and just purchase it outright or pay $15 to start a Uplay+ subscription. Even if I went for the Vanilla versions of all four games I listed that adds up to $240 and an entire year of Uplay+ is $180. Yes I realize in the second scenario I don’t own any of the games but my current running theory is that I subscribe for a few months, get my enjoyment out of the titles and then if for some reason I actually care enough about one of the games to own it… I pick it up later when Ubisoft has their deep discount sales like they often do aligned with Steam sales.
What I have realized is that I don’t return to single player games that often. Sure I have played copious amounts of Fallout and Elder Scrolls games… but I think they might be the exception rather than the rule. I played Assassin’s Creed Origins hard and heavy for a good while and then walked away from it seemingly never to return. While I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Witcher 3, that game was intensive enough that I can’t see myself actually returning to it again. The modern open world game requires so much of you, that once the story is played out… I think it just becomes a challenge to really revisit it. Sure I loved my revisit of Horizon Zero Dawn recently, but that was a case of me experiencing the game through fresh eyes of playing with my chosen platform of Keyboard and Mouse.
I’ve been on the digital download bandwagon for a decade now, and I am starting to wonder if games are shifting around for me much like Movies and Music did. I no longer care about owning any music. What I care about is having access to music when I choose play it and as a result I pay for a streaming subscription. Similarly I don’t care about owning movies, because it is so rare that I will ever sit down and re-watch one. What I care instead is having access to them on the rare occasion that I want to… and for that I also have streaming services. Maybe I have evolved to a point of caring deeply about a small number of games, but wanting access to others just for the purpose of playing them and then dropping them by the wayside.
There we have it… Uplay+ got me and I am now downloading Watch Dog Legions off the subscription plan. I need to set myself a reminder to cancel the service in March, because I can’t really see this being something I want to keep going permanently. It isn’t so much that I cannot afford to buy these games piecemeal over the next several months… but more a case that I didn’t really want to. I didn’t want to shell out that much money in one lump sum. We will see how well this goes and what hidden pitfalls there might be, and I will of course report back how it is going. Anyone else suddenly find the subscription option for UbiSoft significantly more tantalizing with the sequence of releases on the horizon? Maybe I will actually sit down and play through some of the Anno games that I have never touched now that I have access to them all.
Hmm. You might have got me to jump on board too, Bel. I already own watchdogs legion thanks to video card deal, but everything else on your list I also want. Coming at the bit for Valhalla in particular!
But then, that one I might want to actually own, as I have found myself jumping back into Odyssey here and there, particularly for getting through the DLC content.
Will think on it some more!
Er, Chomping at the bit. (go go phone typing!)
I was a digital streaming guy for years… but the plague of internet problems that we have here in Oklahoma has turned me back into an “I want to own it” guy. I am tired of the internet going out and I can’t listen to music, or watch a movie, or play a game. I don’t care about owning everything, but I am to the point where I am actively purchasing 4k UHD discs and picking up cheap blurays. I then rip them, so that my experience is as normalized as possible… but I don’t trust streaming services anymore (let’s not even get into the issue of rotating catalogs).
I usually subscribe then immediately cancel (of course you still get the full month). When your time is about to be up they’ll warn you and if I’m still actively playing, I renew.
Watch Dogs Legion runs like crap on my PC, but I ‘discovered’ Anno 1800 thanks to Uplay+… er Ubisoft+
Apparently (for your readers who are into such things) 1 subscription will cover PC, Luna and Stadia, too. Too bad it doesn’t extend to the consoles!