January’s Xbox Game Pass games announced and it’s a slow start for the new year

Microsoft is hanging its hat more and more on its Game Pass subscription service these days and it is fair to say it had a stellar end to the year with the likes of Stalker 2, Indiana Jones, and Call of Duty dropping.

Fast forward just a few weeks to now and the first wave of games has been announced for the rest of the month and it would not be wrong to say we have been whelmed by the list – that’s not overwhelmed, or underwhelmed, just a bit, well, meh.

Of course, if any of these games tickle your fancy you are likely to feel different but since the introduction of a variety of confusing tiers sorting out who gets what, a lot of the game announcements have merely been games switching between tiers – ie, moving from Ultimate to Standard, which, if you cough up the extra for Ultimate, you clearly are not interested in.

New to Ultimate is UFC 5 but that is only Xbox and if you want to play on PC it’s Cloud gaming for you as it’s not a PC release of course. Somewhat remarkably, the only new Ultimate game for PC is the 1996 first game in the series, Diablo. Yup, the OG Diablo, which, while its welcome arrival as a classic should be lauded, I am paying £15 a month for this stuff.

Caveat that of course by the fact subscribers have definitely had their money’s worth in the last few months, but actually, we are changing our earlier opinion to underwhelmed and we are not alone in that with comments across the internet such as:

“Certainly one of the worst Game Pass editions of all time.”

“Seems like a horrific start to the year for ultimate subscribers jeez”

“So if you have Game Pas Ultimate you only get Diablo and UFC 5, as the rest is already in Game Pass, wtf.”

At this stage, it’s pretty poor but we do have Sniper Elite to come right at the end of January, and there are plenty of other great games on the service to while away the time. Maybe we have been spoiled. Let’s see what February brings beyond Avowed.

• Road 96 (Cloud, Console, and PC) – Live now – 7 January
• Lightyear Frontier (Game Preview) (Xbox Series X/S) – 8 January
• My Time at Sandrock (Console) – 8 January
• Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders (Xbox Series X/S) – 8 January
• Rolling Hills (Console) – January 8
• EA Sports UFC 5 (Cloud and Xbox Series X/S) EA Play – 14 January
• Diablo (PC) – 14 January

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