https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNl21sqNCFs

Apple recently launched Arcade, its game subscription service, and Google has been teasing something similar earlier this month. Today, Google Play Pass has officially become available.

It's a game subscription service that, like Apple Arcade, costs $4.99 per month. It's not just about games though, offering access to more than 350 apps and games that are "completely unlocked" - as in, free of ads, in-app purchases, and upfront payments.

According to Google, Play Pass offers a "high-quality, curated collection of titles", with new stuff being added every month. The service is available for Android devices, unsurprisingly, and for now in the US only. Additional countries should get it "soon". You can start with a 10-day free trial and go from there.

For a limited time, you can get Play Pass for just $1.99/month for the first year, and then $4.99 per month. This offer ends on October 10 at 11:59pm PT.

Examples of titles that you can access with Play Pass are Terraria, Monument Valley, Risk, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, AccuWeather, LIMBO, Lichtspeer, Mini Metro, Old Man’s Journey, while This War of Mine and Cytus are coming soon.

There's a new Play Pass tab in the Google Play Store, that will show up for subscribers to make it easy to locate the content that's included. Elsewhere on the Play Store, Play Pass items are identified by the 'ticket' logo.

You can share your Play Pass subscription with up to five other family members through Google Play Family Library. Each member can access Play Pass individually, so no one's experience will be affected by what others have downloaded.

https://www.gsmarena.com/google_play_pass_game_subscription_service_goes_live_for_499_per_month-news-39306.php

https://blog.google/products/google-play/google-play-pass-enjoy-apps-and-games-without-ads-or-app-purchases/

I like it. It's important to remind people that F2P games aren't the only games on mobile and it's well worth to pay for mobile games other than through predatory micro transactions and gambling.

Limbo and Cytus make it worth at least 5$ a month, so I'll try this.

There are so few games that I actually want to play on a phone, that I rather just buy the games I want to play.

Maybe a service like this can do well just based on the number of users that use Android devices.

Pass.

For two bucks a month I'll give it a try.

At the $1.99 intro price, I may consider it. I certainly won't subscribe at $5 though

I'm most interested specifically because it's not just games. It includes paid non-game apps too.

Not interested in this as I aint on Stadia.

And the "slippery slope" argument will each day lose credibility.

Google Play Pass includes some good mobile games and ported classics, but most of these games are quite old and have been on sale many times: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-play-pass-games-apps-1032500/

So if you are into mobile gaming, you probably already have a lot of these games (which is of course a similar issue for most other game subscriptions on PC and consoles).

On the other hand, Apple Arcade has a lot of brand new games. I'm currently playing these new games on my iPad Pro:

- Oceanhorn 2 (would probably cost around $9 / €9 like its predecessor, which I liked very much)

- Jenny LeClue (costs almost $20 on Steam, almost backed the Kickstarter for $15 a few years ago)

- Tangled Tower (probably around $10 on Steam, GOG and Switch, when it is getting released there at October 10th)

- Shantae and the Seven Sirens: Part 1 (awesome preview to the new unreleased Shantae game)

- Sonic Racing (looks great, plays okay, I can't rate balancing so far)

- Grindstone (I love the humor and animations of this casual puzzle/strategy game)