Google Play Pass had a great first year, but it still has room to grow

Since the launch of Google Play Pass, it’s celebrated its first birthday, expanded to 42 countries, and has added more than 300 new apps and games, including more than 100 teacher-approved kids’ titles. 59 new titles have been added in the past two months alone, and we’re sure to see even more for February. Google really is doing a lot to make Play Pass the premier way to experience the best of the Play Store. We intend to compile a list of the best Play Pass games for your Chromebook, but we want to make sure we’ve tried as many as possible before we take that leap.

Google’s Play Pass subscription offers you nearly 500 apps and games in an ad-free experience for each entry. It even bundles in all of the respective in-app purchases at no extra cost to you and five other members of your family for just $4.99 per month or $29.99 per year. New games are added each month. You can begin with a free trial and decide whether or not you want to keep it too, so there’s no harm in diving in to take a look!

Though I’ve heard a lot of people complain that Play Pass is just full of a bunch of “garbage” apps and games, I’d like to remind everyone that Google’s idea for their subscription service isn’t to offer AAA quality games – that’s what Stadia is for. Instead, it’s made to give you the very best of the Google Play Store and to help you discover new and interesting titles. In fact, there’s truly something for everyone in there. The Play Store has such a breadth of variety and most of it gets passed up and never gets discovered – Play Pass seeks to fix that! If you haven’t tried any of the hundreds of things available to you with your subscription, I recommend you do – just keep an open mind.

Google has stated that several games are slated to release to Play Pass subscribers and stripped of their price tag very soon including Giant Dancing Plushies, Figment (also on Stadia), and The Legend of Bum-Bo, which is a puzzle-based deck-building roguelike prequel to The Binding of Isaac. It’s an eclectic and fun mix for sure. Though it’s meant to be varied in its offerings, I, too, would love to see more titles that are highly sought after brought to the Play Pass bundle.

There are countless games that have plenty of potential, but there are two problems. First, we need better ways to discover the titles that are available! Second, we need Google to start sprinkling in more popular titles more often – it can only help the service grow as it moves forward. Which games would you love to see come to Google Play Pass for February and beyond? What about something like Call of Duty Mobile? Though it’s already free to play, Play Pass does also zero out in-app purchases, so it could be a great idea for Google to form a partnership with Activision and offer free in-game items, at least a limited amount of time to boost their player base.