OPINION: Why Xbox One needs better gambling games

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This is a topic that many of our readers and partners have been telling us to write about. When it comes to consoles, there aren’t many options for gamers who enjoy gambling. Now, before you say we have a few titles out there, let me tell you a story from college. When I was in college, my second-year roommate and I used to play online Texas hold’em and enjoyed the fact that we could win—or lose—actual money. We limited our spending to around $50 so it became more like an interesting activity to do when you’re bored or snowed in rather than what people do when they go to casinos. While there are plenty of options for people like us on the internet, there isn’t a proper cards game on Xbox One.

Sure, Pure Hold’em and Prominence offer a good way to learn the game and an enjoyable single-player experience, they don’t give you the same feeling you get when you’re playing with friends. The multiplayer portions, while they work well, don’t give you an incentive to keep coming back for more. When it comes to these games on Xbox One, there need to be more rewards.

Games like Pure Hold’em offer microtransactions which benefit the publisher more than anyone else. You have to spend actual currency buying chips if you run out. How exactly is that fair? Isn’t the purpose of gambling so that I can make money and not the publisher? I wouldn’t mind this so much had there been no microtransactions—but Pure Hold’em isn’t a free-to-play game. So you have to pay the initial cost of entry and then keep on buying chips. That doesn’t sit right with me at all. I’d rather spend that money elsewhere where I at least have a chance of real returns. Didn’t Microsoft at least question these tactics when they approved Pure Hold’em for release on Xbox One? Someone should look into the exorbitant cost of the tokens you have to buy to properly play the game if you’re a beginner.

There are two ways I think these situations can be improved. The first problem being the issue of rewards when it comes to titles like Prominence and Pure Hold’em. If the publisher started a way to cash in your chips and maybe get a gift card or a free game, that would help and give people more incentive to come back for more. Maybe start a program with Microsoft which allows you to get a $5 Xbox One gift card if you accumulate a certain number of chips. That’s just one idea, I’m sure the team can think of better ones.

Secondly, we need big-name players in the market to target consoles so it gives games like Pure Hold’em a run for their money. Many of these websites focus on a niche market and having a proper experience on consoles which offers real rewards would be good for everyone. It would open up the game to many more people. Competition creates innovation and there are many ways to safeguard gamers from spending too much. Right now microtransactions for the hold’em games on Xbox One aren’t limited but many online casinos impose restrictions on the amount you can lose—at least they did back in the day when I played.

Gambling games on Xbox One shouldn’t be a way for publishers to gouge players with microtransactions. There need to be more rewards for players like there are in real life. Additionally, we need a more robust online structure which hosts multiplayer in an acceptable way. Pure Hold’em suffers from annoying disconnects and in my opinion just doesn’t work well under slower internet conditions. This is another area where the expertise of established companies would come in handy who have been hosting card games—and other such experiences—online for years now. Hopefully someone out there takes notice and we get a proper gambling game for Xbox One. Until then, just be careful on how much you spend on those microtransactions because you aren’t benefiting from them at all.

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