Well it would be bundled with GP Ultimate like it is now. Which is even more incentivized with Xcloud being included at no extra cost.

Game Pass is 10 million plus strong which gives MS double the monthly income as Gold subscribers. This is in no way like PS Plus where Sony had little to incentivize people to get PS Plus while MP was free. GP Ultimate would be the draw. I imagine once GP hits a certain threshold of income it can offset the loss of Gold, which in theory can be gained back from revenue from new gamers attracted to the ecosystem. 

We simply have to wait till the hardware and services show in August. It simply goes against everything MS is doing lately to jack up the price of Gold so high.

To me, making multiplayer free, Gold a deep discount service, and bundling it within GP Ultimate falls in line with their philosophy. 

Maybe we should look at next gen in terms of what each console offers and the current philosophy of each corporation? Their current stance on hardware, games, and services and how they relate to ones own personal tastes?

And while we are at it, can we act less like Microsoft is a bad ex girlfriend? “MS hurt me 7 years ago I’m never going back”. Dude...we talking video games. Let’s drop the Vegeta levels of pride. 

(not necessarily talking to you but those who insist on being stuck in 2013. Like Nintendo or Sony never made blunders) 

I just cannot see them dumping so much easy revenue. I mean, IIRC Gold is still required for F2P games on Xbone.

More likely they are rolling it into GamePass Ultimate or even basic GamePass.

I'm not going to hold my breath for it happen, but Neogamespark does a good job explaining why MS may drop the gold paywall.

It's the first time I've seen this guy, hes good really erudite is this his usual quality if so it might be worth subscribing

Exactly. the best way to raise the price. By raising the price $40 with no announcement, very little backlash, if they took the year subscription and officially raised that by $20 with an announcement, there would be a massive backlash.

$100 a year really blurs that line between cost of gold, and cost of GP ultimate. It can make SOME people getting gold feel like maybe ultimate isn't so bad, while others who just keep getting gold are shoveling $40 more a year to MS, so in the end it's a win win for MS, and a massive loss for the consumer.

I'm a simple gamer, a MP player that gets 2k, and Cod every year, and play those 2 games all year long with very few exceptions along the way. And for the most part I have been ignoring the games with gold over the last 7 years of Xbox one. So something like game pass has zero value to me. Cod is Never gonna be there, at least not a relevant one, 2k is in there now, but I'm a day 1 2k player, 2k wasn't added until months after it's been out so I can't count on gamepass for my 2k fix.

I'm not unique, there are many gamers out there like myself, I know because I'm in those communities, I have people on my friends list pretty much guaranteed to be playing 1 or another of those games. So while I see a lot of game pass praise these days, this is a potential non-consent ass fucking from MS to people like me, and it has me highly concerned. Having no announcement makes me fear the worst, and I'm seriously considering buying 5 years worth of gold from amazon while I can get it for $60, but worried how that'd look by the slim chance that exist that they actually make online play free. .....For the first time since GTA was a sony exclusive, I've actually considered switching to PlayStation over this whole thing.

Well this kind of one sided, biased view at things certainly does paint a picture of a greedy Microsoft that tries at every turn to screw gamers over.
The reality though, it was more the case of a Microsoft that was too ahead trying to get away from physical medium (but still somehow supporting it in the beginning) by adopting a steam like library approach but most gamers were being too conservatives. Mind you some were purposefully conservatives on this.

Today, Microsoft vision of all digital games is becoming pretty much the reality. Most of games sold are digitaly and both Sony and Microsoft will be offering digital only version of their next gen system. You will still lost the ability to rent, lend, sell and trades games on those system. Though if Microsoft would have been able to bring their vision to reality back then, digitally lending a game would still be possible with digital/physical purchase and Sony would have had no choice but to follow suit on this at least for digital purchase. And if one or both were to try a digital game lending service in future you can bet you'll be subject to forced online verification.

I would like to see an updated version of Sony jab at Microsoft video about lending game.
Today version : This is how we share games. Guy no.1 here bros I lend you my game. Guy no.2 sorry bro I have a digital only console.... (Insert GTAV wasted gif)

The worst parts about the original plan for Xbone were the online only aspect, and the inability to trade in physical games without limitations. As I said back then, Titanfall or not, had they launched limiting your ability to lend or trade or sell your games, I would have been all in on PS4. Thank goodness they changed it after the backlash.

On paper their current philosophy aligns a lot with the launch Xbone strategy but in reality, not so much. Xbone was just an utter disaster strategy for consumers in pretty much every way imaginable. Now they have about as great a digital strategy for consumers as possible, but it's still completely optional and you can live entirely on physical games with zero restrictions.

I fully agree with this but with the nuance that the simple explanation of 'they were trying to be anticonsumer' is a biased way to looks at it and is simply illogical . There were benefits to what they were proposing and they were thinking the benefits far outweighed the drawbacks. And seeing what Steam was offering and how it was gaining traction I truly see whats those benefit could have been and why Microsoft tried to push that way. Now, I see Blu ray drive as a vestigial organs, I was seeing them just as such back then and Microsoft was without a doubt also seeing them as such and there vision actually depicted that. 

I understand that most of gamers were not ready but that does not means Microsoft had the intention to screw them over.

It's also funny to look back at he 8th gen and seeing how I mostly played on Steam vs console where a I was/am subject to every drawbacks Microsoft first vision would have brought.

I only recently discovered him, but from what I've seen of his videos, this is up-to-par with his normal quality. The one thing I really enjoy about his videos is how level-headed he is. He recently was a guest on IGN Unlocked podcast and was great on it.