AMD Launches Xbox Game Pass for PC Bundle for Current Radeon & Ryzen Products
by Ryan Smith on July 3, 2019 6:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- CPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Game Bundles
- Ryzen
- Ryzen 3000
Last month back at the Radeon RX 5700 series reveal, AMD announced that they would be launching a new kind of game bundle with the new video cards. Rather than going with the traditional game bundle, the company would instead be bundling a 3 month subscription to Microsoft’s new all-you-can-eat game subscription service, Xbox Game Pass for PC. Meanwhile, as it turns out, AMD’s bundle offer is more comprehensive than they first let on: this week the company announced the bundle also covers most of AMD’s current-generation products as well, with that program kicking off right now.
Over the years AMD has offered a number of game bundles, especially on the video card side of matters. However, a game bundle covering such a wide swath of both their CPUs and GPUs is a bit more unique. In this case the company is looking to hit the ground running on their Ryzen 3000 and Radeon RX 5700 series launches, while also including their current-generation products to entice buyers there as well. All told, along with the new parts, the bundle covers the Radeon RX 560 and higher on the video card side, and the Ryzen 5 2400G and better on the CPU side of matters.
| AMD Xbox Game Pass for PC Bundle | ||||
| Hardware | Bundle | Campaign End Date | ||
| AMD Radeon RX 560 & Above (Including Radeon RX 5700 series) |
Xbox Game Pass for PC 3 Months Free (Cannot be stacked) |
March 10th, 2020 | ||
| AMD Ryzen 5 2400G & Above (Including Ryzen 5/7/9 3000 series) |
||||
Up until now, at least, bundling a game subscription service is unorthodox for this industry; vendors have typically bundled specific games with their products, often as part of large cross-promotional and bulk purchase deals. Resale shenanigans aside, the drawback for hardware vendors has been the need to select games well in advance, and hope they’ve selected good and popular games that will entice their customers. A game subscription service, on the other hand, sidesteps those issues by offering a large selection of games for customers across a number of genres, which in the case of Microsoft’s service includes Metro Exodus and Microsoft-published games like Forza Horizon 4 and Gears 5.
The flip side is that outside of a few headliner titles, these sorts of services tend to be comprised of older games, and Microsoft’s service is no exception to that rule. So while the library is relatively extensive, few of the games available are highly-popular AAA titles (as publishers would want to sell full-priced copies of those anyhow). The very nature of a subscription service also means that while hardware buyers come out of the deal with free service time, they don’t end up owning (and getting to keep) any games. In this respect a free subscription offer falls closer to a free trial, especially with AMD’s bundle since it’s only for 3 months and the vouchers can’t be stacked (so you can’t buy a Ryzen CPU + Radeon GPU and get 6 months, for example).
At any rate, AMD’s Xbox Game Pass bundle has kicked off this week for AMD’s current-generation products, and will go into effect on Sunday for their next-generation products when those launch. Most retailers are participating in the program, but you’ll want to check AMD’s website for a complete list, along with information on how to redeem the vouchers. The program is set to end on March 10th of 2020, or when AMD runs out of vouchers.
Source: AMD
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nandnandnand - Wednesday, July 3, 2019 - link
Who plays video games anymore? It's all about those GPU DeepNudes.eldakka - Thursday, July 4, 2019 - link
It's actually a $0 dollar credit as I don't use these services.clsmithj - Wednesday, July 3, 2019 - link
How they going leave out the RX 550 4GB card. They get no love? I paid $110 for that GPU at Best Buy last year.thesavvymage - Thursday, July 4, 2019 - link
Well, yeah. The value here would be over 25% of the cost of your card. Given that prices are even lower now (under 90), there is hardly any margin in a product like that to justify adding a $30 bundled promo to it.Koenig168 - Wednesday, July 3, 2019 - link
Nice freebie for the Ryzen CPUs. It won't help to sell GPUs though since Nvidia has a game bundle for the Super cards which is a better deal.Quantumz0d - Thursday, July 4, 2019 - link
What is this Cancer bundle packs ?Xbox Pass on PC is the last thing ever a PC gamer will ever want to even take that as free. This GaaS should die. No one in their right minds should buy this cancer or even become a part of this JUNK.
AMD is utter shameless, Nvidia on the other hand always had bundles and with the Super RTX lineup this RX5700 Navi is DOA, I'm happy that Nvidia is stomping them. Too much cancer. Xbox GaaS infestation to PC Win32 ecosystem ? Hell no. If you give them a little chance they'll make the gap wider and wider and one point the gaming itself will become GaaS.
eva02langley - Thursday, July 4, 2019 - link
Oh... man... shilling at its best...urbanman2004 - Thursday, July 4, 2019 - link
Correct me if I'm wrong, but for the folks who don't know, GaaS = Games as a Service.Xyler94 - Friday, July 5, 2019 - link
First, Games as a Service is not a Games Library like this.Secondly, Nvidia isn't doing that out of the kindness of their heart. The games they offer are purely Nvidia optimized games, with gameworks and such. And last I saw, the games on offer weren't even that good.
Thirdly, Game Pass on PC is rather nice. Have you actually looked into it or are you too stuck up to do that? Play 1 new game, and you've paid your subscription for 6 months. play 2 new games and you've just saved a year's worth of gaming. Unlike EA Access, Gamepass included new games too, which might I add, there's nothing exclusive to it. Most games releasing on Game Pass are gonna be available on Steam.
And as for your blatant shilling, why didn't you just say "AMD bad NVIDIA Gud"? Would have saved you so much effort.
PeachNCream - Thursday, July 4, 2019 - link
I'm not worried much about the idea of a game bundle, but I am reasonably impressed with AMD's CPU offerings. In fact, I'm even moreso impressed now after I got my hands on a laptop with really nice A4-1250 processor. For only clocking at 1.0GHz, it's decently responsive under Linux Mint and the Radeon HD 8210 is good so far (under Mesa - haven't gotten around to loading the OEM video driver yet and not sure if I'll bother as I'm not much of a gamer). I do wish AMD would focus more attention on the thin and light or fanless small laptop category since Intel's offerings are generally lacking in the GPU department and the sub-8W category is really where most of the world is going anyway. Desktops have been dead for years and I'm not even sure why we make such high TDP processors for daily computer usage in a world where we need to focus a lot more on conservation of energy than we have ever before.