Another Five Games Will Leave Xbox Game Pass Soon (December 31)

The first three Yakuza games leaving is a huge loss for the service if you ask me. Hopefully they'll be able to add them back at a later date.

Sad to see Yakuza 0, Kiwami, and Kiwami 2 leave Game Pass. I started Yakuza 0 back in January this year, and thanks to Game Pass, I played through all of the mainline Yakuza games throughout this year. I liked the games so much that I eventually straight up bought them all after I beat 6. Fantastic games, I can’t recommend them enough. If anyone hasn’t got around to trying them yet, please give Yakuza 0 a shot before it leaves. At least 3 through 7 will still be on Game Pass, but the games being removed are the best ones to play when starting the series.

As an aside, The Little Acre is a very easy 1000 gamerscore game. I recommend following this video as you play it if you want some achievements before it leaves Game Pass.

Yakuza games leaving...I think this, and the fact that the new persona game is hitting every platform but Xbox, probably puts to rest the rumours of Xbox buying sega...

@Bleachedsmiles Bethesda games left Xbox before the acquisition but I still think your right about Sega

Yakuza games have been on the game pass for aaaaages. It sucks to some go but I'm assuming their player count isn't really that high anymore seeing as they've been available for so long. Glad I played through them when I did though

I've been dreading that news. Not that I don't own all the games, but because cloud streaming is tied to Game Pass it means I can't stream them anymore, and I was hoping to be able to do that for the rest of the series. Maybe having bought an S isn't such a bad deal after all. I'll have to use that for streaming Yakuza games.

I really hope someday they add the ability to stream your owned library like Stadia and GFN. It's a big limitation, I think, in the service, that anyone that wants to stream can only play from a specific list of games, and not just buy games they want to play.

I suppose this goes along with having added Forza and Halo, but I do hope they add other meaty RPGs, because the Yakuza games represented a massive chunk of content, and games like Sniper Elite and most indies don't replace the heft they brought to the library.

Think I'm on chapter 10 of YK2, better get a move on!

Never got around to playing any of the Yakuza games. At least they get pretty decent sales, so will likely just plonk them on the wishlist and wait rather than try to rush through them before they leave.

PES is the big one for me though - my most played game apparently. Doesn't look like you can actual buy that one anymore so will be forced into either that eFootball abomination that replaced it or FIFA - oh dear. Guess I'll just finish up the rest of the season and call it a day.

Maybe we'll get Judgement now that Yakuza is leaving. Who knows

Oh man, not Yakuza. Honestly having all the Yakuza games was one of the pulls of GamePass for me, in addition the other almost 400 games of course

That sucks, for some reason I imagined they would stay there for a long time, as obviously the effort was made to have the entire collection.

I already have most of them on other platforms, but it's one of my favourite series, so was really looking forward to playing them on my Series X.

@Medic_Alert

It works great, for both Xbox and PlayStation. I have a young son so I can’t hog the TV especially when playing adult content. It’s a lifesaver lol.

I highly recommend the Backbone controller to those interested.

Big loss in terms of Cloud gaming, especially for Japan with the Yakuza games leaving.
Xbox needs to keep these types of games in the service for as long as possible.

@Medic_Alert I wouldn't have tried doing it with the X. I'm always afraid of putting more wear on it for unnecessary use (and my paranoia wasn't unfounded considering it died even with babying it like that!) But now that I have the S sitting around I may just do that.

This series was just such a huge amount of content on GP and for streaming. I'll be quite a while until the MS first party RPGs can fill a void the size this will leave.

Lol people trying to amount the leaving of Yakuza as a significant loss. Been on the service long enough and there's loads on the service to keep the bar high. naturally the pessimists will want to see this as a calamity but really it's just typical of any streaming Netflix style service. Xbox has already announced tons of games coming next month and many more next year and with the likes of starfield it's safe to say yakuza leaving isn't the end of the world.

@Handy_Man agreed, they are simply some of the best games I've ever played, and it's such a shame to see them go. I liked the idea of more people experiencing them through GamePass, if they wouldn't ordinarily try them.

As a huge Shenmue fan, they are kind of like the more action packed and gritty spiritual successor.

@NEStalgia You can do classic remote play on the Series consoles? I had no idea, I haven't seen the option anywhere. I thought it was just cloud play.

@Raffles Haha, yep! It's actually a new-ish feature, they just officially added it a few months ago. It didn't support it at launch, and there was a beta PC app you had to side-load through the Windows store to make it work on PC for quite a while, but it was maybe August or September they officially added it back into both the PC and the mobile apps. Console must be in "instant on" mode, etc. etc, but it works well. If you have it set to turn the TV on when the xbox turns on, it'll turn the TV on, so you kind of have to plan around that a little.

And unlike PS4/5 you can connect to any Xbox you've logged into, not just the one that's marked as your "primary". That drives me crazy with PS, but with XB and my old 1X sitting around, and the new XSS I bought as a spare while my XSX was down just to "keep around" I could set that up as basically a local "game streaming server" and just log into it whenever I wanted. Actually XSS makes for a really cute and power efficient dedicated headless local streaming server! At least until they eventually (hopefully) enable cloud for all purchased games.

@Ihavenomouthandimust It's not funny. It's a fact. It doesn't matter if a game has been on there for a while. If they are games that people consider really good, losing them is a loss. Not everybody has been on the service for a long time. I'm sure there's new subscribers every week, and it's always a good thing to have as many good and recognizable games on the service as possible when you are marketing a service to people and trying to get people to stick around.

Is it the end of the world? No, but again, Microsoft should want to keep as many recognizable good titles on the service as possible, and it's never exactly a good thing when they leave the service. Once again, it's also not funny if people are just pointing out facts. It is a negative against the service if it can only keep a handful of these kind of titles on the service, no matter how good of a value Game Pass is in general.

@KilloWertz I get your point but I just don't think Yakuza is THAT big of a fish. I'm sure MS know more than we do and hopefully they got the right data to work with. My opinion stands dude. But it's just an opinion. I'm no expert lol

I bought 0 for pennies in a sale not long ago, I’ll wait to grab the first two Kiwami games in a sale too I guess. Very great games but I’m not surprised this happened eventually.

My boyfriend has been hounding me to play Yakuza 0 for a while now, but guess I've missed my chance.

It really does suck that games seem to come and go at random (from a consumer's perspective). I guess this is just the reality of the wider streaming world as digital downloads got rid of your ownership of what you bought, and now streaming is at the whim of the platform holders, and licensees.