I've heard bits of this idea from others from time to time, and I have to agree. Now that they have fully moved to an 'Xbox everywhere' strategy where all major Xbox titles will hit PC as well, I think they more or less HAVE to do this, or risk making their console gamers feel like suckers. "The exact same game on PC and Xbox One, but they make me pay for XBL?"

Think back to gen7. X360 had a very solid lead in the US/UK, but as the prices lowered on the PS3 and interesting exclusives accumulated, PS3 had a very decent latter part of the gen by being an easy 'companion' console for 360 players. Part of that reason was that adding a PS3 to the party didn't mean buying yet another subscription service.

Now the roles are reversed, and the PS4 is leading by a little to a lot globally depending on region. Of the owners that enjoy playing online MP games, obviously those people are already subscribing and paying for PSN+. Adding an X1 to the mix isn't as easy of a move for those people because it means adding the MP sub cost. Yes, in the big picture $50-$60 isn't terribly pricey, but it is still a ton more than 'free'.

With PC gamers getting online Xbox games with no XBL fee, it seems like the right time to make this move. It's not like Xbox is even a drop in the bucket for MS as a whole. The entire division (difficult to fully encapsulate due to the brain-bending ways MS plays their financial shell games) could either double, or vanish, and it would have virtually zero impact on the company as a whole. So, why not do it now/soon?

Just as Sony made PS+ have free games/goodies for subscribers in gen7, MS could do the same thing this time. MP totally free, but subscribe and you get extra stuff (they could even get this to work on PC! I'd probably consider it depending on the content!).

I love what MS is doing with the Xbox/PC synergy. I think this can be a wise decision.

Thoughts?

Considering how little, if any, profit Microsoft has made on gaming since creating the Xbox brand,i doubt they are going to make xbl free, unless they anticipate such an increase in sales from pc gamers that it will offset lack of revenue from xbl.

Xbox has never been about revenue AFAIK, the only conceivable value it has to MS is in consumer outreach and brand awareness.

Xbox OG lost a massive amount of money (but still nothing in MS big picture financials)

X360 started out losing a ton of money with RROD replacements in vast numbers, before probably nearly breaking even later on (for the 360 only, not enough to cover OG losses)

X1 hasn't exactly lit the world on fire, so probably negligible profit/loss consideration. 

Xbox as a whole is a grain of sand in the Microsoft economic empire. Statistically irrelevant, in strictly numbers talk. The purely smart financial move would have been to never venture into console gaming to begin with. Thankfully, there were those that realized that pure profits aren't the only factors in the world. Without Xbox, many consumers, particularly the younger set, would never think about them one way or the other.

TLDR : Basically Xbox is utterly and completely irrelevant to MS in terms of P&L. They make more in a quarter from their business software products than Xbox and PS together make in MANY years combined.

They could make it free and still do GWG, but I'd rather they not throw any sort of sub on PC, that is the last thing I'd expect from them.

I was talking as a manner of accumulating free games & such, but yeah, it's not entirely necessary either way.

I do think it would be cool if it were totally not related to any MP paywall kind of thing, but subscribe to GWG and get an instant game collection + 1 or more free games/month for whatever minor charge. It couldn't hurt, so long as ZERO MP/content were paywalled.

I get what you mean, It's just that in the past any form of sub payment when it came to MS on PC really didn't gel well with that community and eventually got hounded over the years. Besides that I'm honestly content with sites like GMG and stores like Steam holding their own form of sales, those I can wait for and don't require some form of sub where I need to pass money for something.

Hahah true. PC is an embarrassment of riches in terms of awesome value and content selection. Even Origin and uPlay have great sales/freebies pretty frequently, and GoG and Steam are full on amazing. $100 gets you a pretty diverse giant library for a PC gamer.

It's XBL almost the sole source of any actual profit MS has made from Xbox over the last 2 1/2 generations? If not the only source then a large majority of it.

But it is true that an increasingly unified environment between PC and console for MS does make paid online for XBL stick out like a dog's balls. Though I think MS is more likely to try to slap paid online onto PC somehow than relinquish it for console. Of course the problem for MS in PC is that while PC is virtually a single platform, there are many game providers and online services. and if MS slaps a fee for gaming through a MS service people will merely get their gaming from Steam or G2A, or GoG or Origin, or wherever. So MS would need to be pushing all those other players out of PC before they could introduce paid online for PC. And that wouldn't be easy if they were to try.

I dont really mind paying for online.

Probably wouldn't make much sense for Microsoft, but I think basic online functionality such as multiplayer shouldn't cost anything.