It’s here, it’s finally here—Microsoft is finally bringing their PC Game Pass video game subscription plan to Malaysia. In fact, it’s not just Malaysia that’s getting PC Game Pass as Microsoft is bringing PC Game Pass to several countries in the region, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.
For the uninitiated, PC Game Pass will allow users to download and play any game title in their library of games. This includes some big names such as Age of Empires 4, Forza Horizon 5, Minecraft, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Halo Infinite and more. There’s also titles from the recently-acquired Bethesda such as the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, while there’s even an EA Play subscription bundled along with PC Game Pass for access; EA Play is normally priced at RM17 per month.
It’s perhaps worth mentioning that this is technically different from the regular Xbox Game Pass Ultimate in other countries. While both are available in other regions, the latter subscription plan includes an Xbox Live Gold, similar to PS+ for PlayStation consoles. There’s also regular Xbox Game Pass, which lets Xbox users access the library of games but without EA Play or Xbox Live Gold bundled. Seeing as Microsoft has never actually officially brought the Xbox console to our shores, it makes sense then that only the PC Game Pass is coming to Malaysia.
According to Microsoft, you can sign up for the PC Game Pass preview and try it out during the whole preview period for just RM1, as Microsoft themselves are testing out local payment systems. They also want you to share feedback to them so that they can make improvements to the service.
If you’re interested in trying it out, you simply need to download the Xbox Insider app from the Microsoft Store, sign into it with your Microsoft account and head to the Previews page. There, select the PC Game Pass Southeast Asia Market Expansion preview and join it, and once that’s done you’re good to go. You can launch the Xbox app, sign in with the same account and you can then subscribe to the PC Game Pass trial from there onwards.
However, while Microsoft themselves say that it’ll cost RM1.00 to try it out during the whole preview period, at time of writing when we tried to sign up for it ourselves, it says that it’ll cost just RM0.50 to join. Furthermore, Microsoft also didn’t say how much PC Game Pass will eventually cost when it officially launches, but on the PC Game Pass trial page it says that automatically continue the subscription at RM15 per month.
“At Xbox, our mission is simple, to bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone on the planet. Bringing PC Game Pass to new countries in Southeast Asia is an important part of how we will achieve this as we strive to reach billions of players,” – Jeremy Hinton, Xbox Asia Business Lead
As someone who has almost 500 games on my Steam profile alone, I’m certainly excited for PC Game Pass to finally be official in Malaysia, even if I may already own some of the games on offer. PC Game Pass could and should be a great way for the average gamer to try out titles they haven’t played before, or even play brand new games from Microsoft’s assortment of game studios such as Bethesda. Starfield anyone?
