And the 'risk' to gamers is more monetization and trickled content to keep engagement going. Just as mobile 'free to pay' games are more grind oriented with daily tasks to keep you in their grip. So while you get access to more games, each game will try harder to keep you in their hands to get more money out of you. It's a bit of a contradiction, more games, yet all want more of your time to recoup their costs. Time is finite as well.

it's also all the not so great games that you avoid purchasing and regretting later.

See, its people/consumers like you that allow capitalist companies to abuse laws, job security, workers rights and attempt to carve society to their will.

Unlike you, there are regulators, government agencies, academics, business analysts that do attempt to find out the ethics of businesses and their models. Consumers, unless they wish to be tools, are increasingly aware of the consequences of certain business models.

MS is such a 2 Trillion company that Xbox got dominated by Playstation and Nintendo 3 times out of 4 LMAO. Xbox fans love to throw around MS's marketcap like its some be all end all, when it just shows their lack of business acumen.

MS got to where it is by platform economics that even the US government considered anti-competitive: Windows. IE, Bing, Office, and now Azure all try and use their Windows monopoly to become popular products. It worked for a while and still does (Teams vs slack) but MS learnt the hardway that Windows is not as big as it was in the 80s. It got handily beaten many times by Apple, Google, Sony, Valve, Amazon, Zoom etc

Windows gaming got destroyed by Steam. There is little hope Windows gaming store can in anyway compete with Steam so MS uses Steam as well.

Epic thinks by burning money with timed exclusives they will compete, but it turns out their store lacks many ways what Steam has, and Valve has some great exclusives of their own. Epic's best push is Fortnite, a game that has been in massive decline since 2018 and is mostly played on console.

Xbox got dominated by Playstation, especially in the business model of being a platform holder. Sony have beaten MS by 120:50 in hardware and now get near 70% of all third party sales.

Being dominated both on the PC and console side, Xbox is now going to service subs, as way to form its own dominant platform. There are numerous reasons why the gaming industry and business model is bad for the sub model but I will put it simply.

Netflix, Spotify, Disney+ are very open in their growth. They give quarterly sometimes even monthly updates on sub count, sub types, and a ton of other data to clearly show growth.

Spotify's revenue grew 10 times in 4 years. Netflix had an exponential increase in revenue.

Gamepass is nothing like Spotify or Netflix.

And the 'risk' to gamers is more monetization and trickled content to keep engagement going. Just as mobile 'free to pay' games are more grind oriented with daily tasks to keep you in their grip. So while you get access to more games, each game will try harder to keep you in their hands to get more money out of you. It's a bit of a contradiction, more games, yet all want more of your time to recoup their costs. Time is finite as well.

This is a common line of reasoning people use when they shit on GamePass, which I am not saying you are, but it is a common theory. Another one is that developers will just poop out small unfinished games just to have a regular drip of GamePass content. The problem with these theories are that 1, it certainly hasn’t happened yet and MS has had years to make it happen. And 2, if they were to load the service up with crappy MTX infested rushed games, why would anyone subscribe?

Take your theory for example, that it will lead to more MTX and less content. You’re forgetting that publishers need to sell these games outside of the service, too. Of course, publishers already have in the past and will continue in the future to release bare bones games at full price and slowly release content. This was happening well before GamePass and if GamePass ceased to exist today, it would still happen in the future. But these games are typically roasted for this and sales are affected. You’re going on about how risky GamePass and services will be, so why would a company neuter their sales gravy train just because of GamePass? It’s as weird as the idea that MS will just put crap out just to have content out. How do they sell these games to non subscribers? How do bad games entice people to subscribe or stay subscribed?

But really it just makes you seem as if you’ve never experience GamePass. Which, maybe you have, I don’t know. But all this talk about super large budgets and $70 titles and F2P mobile tactics flooding the service. I just finished Plague Tale recently, an amazing SP game. Still installed and slowly being chipped away at over the last couple months are The Ascent, Art of Rally, 12 Minutes, Artful Escape, Sable, and Lemnis Gate. This month I’ll be installing Phoenix Point and Back 4 Blood. I guess the jury is still out on Back 4 Blood, it is made from the studio that did Evolve after all, but the rest are single player games with no F2P tactics or scummy monetization. And the games MS has in the pipeline… which look to have these problems? I can’t think of any.

Fun fact i use the gamepass discount to buy games

"And no, Sony's version doesn't count as it doesn't include all first party, modern releases."

The models you're talking about and the one Dulfite is envisioning and being hinted by Game Pass aren't the same thing. Adding in a bunch of old games that a few people are buying at 30% of their launch prices, or a small percentage of AA/AAA games day and date, is perfectly fine and sustainable for a giant like Microsoft. But the more new games they add, the less financial sense it'll make. This fact is already given away by Game Pass costing way more than Playstation Plus. You don't need profits and revenue breakdowns to know that much.

Some conspiracy theorists are already talking about Sony "paying publishers to keep games off Game Pass" as though publishers are dying to put them there. That's not what's going on.

We don't yet have enough information to know the exact implications of Game Pass. Hopefully Microsoft will stop shying out in sharing their gaming division data to give us a real sense of what's happening. Most sales trackers no longer sharing sales splits is complicating things as well.

What the literal hell are you talking about dude? lol you clearly have never tried Game Pass if this is how you think it works. I've been a subscriber for a little over a year now, and all I ever play are single player games. You make it sound as if every game on the service is a live-service game with monetization. There's a few for sure like Sea of Thieves, ESO, Marvel's Avengers, or most of EA's games, but most of the games on the service are single player games, which is also what most of Microsoft's first-party studios are working on now btw.

You're just looking for a justification for your thoughts on a service it doesn't sound like you've even tried. 

The true value of Game Pass isn't just the library of great games, it's also all the not so great games that you avoid purchasing and regretting later. 

There are so many games I was interested in buying, but when I tried it on GP, I quickly was glad I didn't outright purchase it. But I also finally was able to play games I've been wanting to, but just never got around to it like the Dishonored series, Wolfenstein series, Alien Isolation, The Outer Worlds, Control, Prey, DOOM Eternal, Greedfall, and Hades. These are just games I've been able to finish this year and they're all single player games. I don't get into live service games exactly for the reasons you laid out, but that doesn't make up most of the games on the service. 

This is not a conspiracy theory, it's actually a fact. There have been leaks of documents related to Sony-Capcom marketing deal for RE Village, where Capcom is not allowed to put the game on GamePass within a year or so. So, yeah, it's a real point in marketing contracts. Of course it has more to do with the fact that putting game to GamePass will make game associated with Xbox brand and marketing deal's main purpose is to make game associated with Playstation here, but still, it's a fact.