Xbox wants you to pay 24 to 40 cents per hour to stream games you already bought

Time-based a la carte charges come on top of the purchase price for the games themselves.

The short version

• The “introductory launch pricing” for Xbox’s Cloud Playtime purchases is as follows: Purchased playtime “remains available until it’s used,” Microsoft writes, so you don’t have to worry about your 50-hour purchase expiring before you can use it fully.
• Paying for playtime directly like this evokes images of old arcades, where players would invest a quarter or two (in 20th century dollars) often for just a few minutes of gameplay.
• That kind of metered play has fallen heavily out of fashion, though, in favor of one-time purchases for an all-you-can-play experience at home.

What happened

Say what you will about the old arcade model, but you didn’t have to buy the cabinet and then pay a quarter per play. In 2014, Sony offered a la carte streaming game access for set rental periods as part of its new PlayStation Now service .

Why it matters

While that system didn’t require up-front game purchases, the initial pricing was exorbitant, rising to $30 for 90 days of real-time streaming access, even for games that could be purchased outright on disc for less.

Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.