What Microsoft should do to stay competitive.

[Mummelmann]

JRPGfan said:

Another thing, is some games are probably too big for gamepass.
Like the amount of money lost, putting it on gamepass instead of selling it the traditional way.... is to large.

And again the amount of games, that can be on gamepass, and still make gamepass viable, has a limit.
If you take that 9.99$ pr month, and cut it into 10,000 peices (if theres 10,000 games) and pass on each little bit of that, to the dev studios that made said 10,000 games, not all are gonna be happy.

This touches on something I've been saying since long before the Activision/Blizzard deal went through; funneling more and more large games into streaming services or GP-like services will be detrimental so creative efforts in the entire space. The only sound way to implement a growing GP system would be to have a weighting system, where more costly, and more eye-catching, releases get significantly more of the income. The issue with that is that it creates a market where breakout studios and titles are more or less impossible to foster. And as turnover changes from 'consumer - developer' to 'massive publisher - developer via monthly fees that get shared in wildly different increments and amounts', less and less power and opportunity will arise for smaller studios and efforts. In effect, the biggest sharks would grown ever bigger, and all the little fish would fight for scraps or pray to get eaten.

Centralization of executive creative decisions is a bad idea, on most scales and in most instances. But this will be the result if this development continues.