All the digital games that you can download, that’s what video game publisher Electronic Arts is promising when it attempts to lure users into its EA Access subscription service. I’ve heard it described casually as Netflix for video games, but too many things get that description for it to be of any use, I think. Either a video plays or it doesn’t. Video games are more complicated than that. With EA Access on Xbox One, you get to play dozens of games without buying them separately. I went into it thinking that this was the service’s main appeal.
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Video games are only getting more expensive as time goes by. Movies, television shows and music have all recently found themselves in the midst of a renaissance thanks to subscription services. Millions have a Spotify account. Everyone you know likely has a Netflix subscription or the username and password of someone they know who is paying for the service. Xbox Game Pass is Microsoft’s entry in this space.
I can’t say that I’ve ever really been critical of Microsoft’s approach to updating the Xbox One. When new Xbox One features that you like are added on the regular, it’s hard to find it in yourself to examine things in a critical fashion. Every time new Xbox One features are added in a monthly update I picture a guy in a straw hat two-stepping with a cane from side to side and exclaiming “the happy times are here again.” I’m a disturbed individual, this we all know.
Even after the decades that have passed, hearing someone scream “It’s morphing time” still feels special. The Power Rangers series that aired in the 1990s receives a lot of credit for being a cultural icon. It was, but describing it as that leaves so much nuance out. To a generation of kids that didn’t have much else to watch and didn’t have parents to let them in after school, the Power Rangers were a morality play. Here were five teenagers from a nowhere town that looked like you and talked like you. They got good grades and battled monsters. Here was this world that was fair, just and understanding
Bioware finally takes the blanket of secrecy fully off Mass Effect Andromeda this week. It’s impossible to overstate how popular the Mass Effect franchise is. I have friends with weapons from the game tattooed on their forearm (Hello Stein.) Members of my family have insisted on sending me home from a party early so that I could play the first three games in the series. Yes, I’m that guy amongst a sea of gaming fans who has managed to skip every game in the series until now. Don’t look at me that way. I didn’t have an Xbox 360 when the first Mass Effect arrived. By the time the last one was available I was living on my own. Rent payments and Ramen came first.
Constant vigilance, that’s what it takes to keep up on all the latest things coming to Xbox, Netflix and the myriad of services that you have in your home. Each month with Ask The en, I take your questions on gaming and media the media that you enjoy when you need a break from gaming. Xbox Game Pass is on tap for this month. So is a look at films I consider to be classics.
Speaking from personal experience, now is an awkward time to be an African American. In my lifetime, race shed its 1,000-pound gorilla suit. It’s a slow stalking predator these days, an always-present, but seldom talked about reality. For reasons related to white houses and riots, it’s back at the forefront and ripe for exploration in culture. Take Get Out for instance.
Remember the shivering cold days of late November? Every once in a while, we’d stop to think about all the games that’d just made their début. We'd sit in our arm chairs, finishing another Xbox One game on our bucket lists and luxuriating in all the free time we were going to have to enjoy them over the holidays? Jokes on you folks. It’s February and Spring 2017 games are just around the corner. It’s time to kick this bad boy into high gear. 
I don’t just spend a lot of time interacting with technology. I spend a ridiculous amount of time reading about it too. Since the tender age of 17, I’ve read one guy at least once a day, Thurrott’s Paul Thurrott. If you asked me why I still read him day after day, I wouldn’t be able to tell. I think it’s just out of habit at this point because it surely isn’t about the content. Take his shot at the Xbox Insider Program from earlier today.
I didn't realize it when it started, but Monday would be the first day of a four-day tech high for me. Maybe you don't know what a tech high is, but you've probably experienced one. It happens when all the stars align just right. You're researching something cool that you were only mildly interested in. Then, as if you're returning to a police station to claim a bag of money that no one else did, you get excited. Your heart flutters. You realize that the piece of tech you're looking at could change everything. Last Monday I purchased the Samsung Gear S3 Frontier.