The Risen Empire

Here to entertain and have some wholesome laughs

05/03/2026

May this joke never die

John Krasinski In The 90's 👇We Have A Patreon!👇https://patreon.com/didyoucatchthishttp://didyoucatchthis.comhttps://www.tiktok.com/://www.facebook.com/didyoucatc...

04/23/2026

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Price Update - Xbox Wire

04/21/2026

Today Microsoft announced a shocking change. After years of endless price hikes and content bloat, Microsoft has begun making sweeping changes to the Xbox gamepass price and content library.

After the surprise "retirement" of longtime Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in February 2026, Microsoft announced a rather surprising replacement. A relative newcomer to Xbox whose resume includes her status as a board member of Home Depot and her time as a VP at Meta. I immediately saw the potential for improvements across the Xbox ecosystem. From the controversial "Everything is an Xbox" campaign to the incomprehensible shift away from exclusives, I think we can all agree the trust of the player base has been deeply fractured over these last few years.

I remember reading an interview in the immediate aftermath of her promotion. Asha Sharma is young, only 36, and her experience included extensive time working with AI, so you can see the concern right away amongst gamers and the general consumer market. After having AI slop jammed into everything that could possibly fit it, having Co-Pilot force installed, and being shown a future with less and less genuine human experiences, many expressed unease.

However, from her comments in a few interviews, as well as the decisions announced today, I actually see potential not only for improvement for Xbox, but for the entire gaming ecosystem as a whole. I hope other brands follow her lead and focus on the gamers, on the readers, the viewers, the actual people buying their content and investing their time, instead of constantly chasing ever escalating sales margins.

Right away she complained that gamepass was getting too expensive and alienating the players, that Xbox had stopped responding to the players and stopped caring.

An exact quote "we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop. Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided to us."

And, while I agreed wholeheartedly, I suspected that was just a play at public perception, that she was just saying what we wanted to hear.

So imagine my shock when I read this article from Xbox. Not only have they reduced prices (nearly 25% depending on your region and tier), they have also announced that new releases of Call of Duty will not come to Gamepass until 12 months after release.

Obviously we're all thrilled about the former, but I imagine some people are disappointed by the removal of CoD from Gamepass. I'm personally thrilled. While I love easy access, I think the quality of the experience was greatly reduced by their immediate inclusion on Gamepass.

If you release on Gamepass you are automatically reducing the amount of money you'll get per (average) copy sold, so how do you make that money?

MONETIZATION. Remove the Gamepass crutches, and you can remove the monetization. Now... Will they remove that? No. We all know they won't. But they will reduce it's prevalence. And that's something we can all be grateful for.