The Xbox site on Telstra's webpage is down and I think that pretty much sums up how this deal is going to go in Australia.

This is a really solid idea in the UK and the US, but partnering with Telstra in this manner and tying the subscription behind a totally separate paywall (and only here in Australia!?!!?!) was lunacy MS.

I didn't use the absolute best case scenario options for the discrete purchases options. I even calculated the official yearly $60 for XBL Gold, even if you can get 12-month-download codes for $40 - $50.

The Xbox One X + 5 Gears games + 3 months game pass was already available for €275 (shipping + taxes included). This won't be the last deal for under $300 / €300 this holiday season. And all over the next year similar deals will be available when Microsoft and the retailers are trying to sell off the old stock to make space in the warehouses and on the shelves for the new console generation.

The $1 upgrade deal for GamePass Ultimate will probably go away soon, but it is naive to think that there won't be other good deals for GamePass or GamePass Ultimate in the future... Microsoft is very agressively trying to get as much people as possible into that subscription and I don't see that changing.

I also wanted to make it clear that the Scarlett ain't included in the $744 and we don't know how much the Scarlett-upgrade will cost, so we don't know the total costs.

Kinda surprised Playstation Now only has 1m subscribers considering it has roughly 50% of the marketshare (revenue). Numbers for that are kinda old but yeah...
https://www.superdataresearch.com/gaming-subscription/

Game Pass should have way more subscribers (I'm thinking of around 4 million). The problem probably is that most are using the $1 test version.

I honestly don't know if that has any weight, Superdata were as much a laughing stock and incredible as VGC numbers until that article arrived.

Joyride is a hidden gem :). Loved Jedi starfighter on PS2 is a bit outdated tho..

That's 3 former Game Pass titles.
What the hell. This is the worst month I've ever seen. Truly embarrassing.

I don't think the Gold games are to bad but I guess if you played them on Gamepass it sucks :( I think Gold will die out over the next year or two as MS just need to get the GamePass subs going so it isn't a massive drop to the revenue if everyone's on GPU and Gold just fizzles out.

Started The Outer Worlds and played for 4 hours straight. Really good game.
While clearly not a game with a big budget, the visuals are better than I initially thought. Native 4k is very noticeable on the X. My only gripe is texture pop-in.

However I'm a bit surprised about the length. When I already collected my 4th companion within those 4 hours of gameplay, I decided to look on Howlongtobeat.com and turns out the main story is only about 10 hours and 28 hours if you do absolutely everything.
Again I know it didn't have the biggest budget but that's rather short for an RPG (especially compared to a Fallout game). At least that's something that will no doubt improve in the MS funded sequel. Double (or triple) the content and put some more work in the visuals and this will be a big hit.

I'm loving it. One of those games you want to play 6 hours straight. I'm also surprised the main story is so short but trust me, there's plenty of stuff to. I've already played it much more than 10 hours. And wasn't Fallout 3 main story also quite short?

My only problem is that it's way too easy. I'm playing on hard difficulty and there's no challenge at all. 

Yeah I agree it's quite easy. Playing on normal and only had to use the inhaler at the beginning of the game a few times. Same is true for the tactical time dilation. There's no real need to use it.

Main story of Fallout 3 is about 20 hours long.