I don't know a win-win situation where MS retains their current game pass userbase and pleases company heads at MS. If MS drops day one release from Game Pass, millions of people will unsub from the service, that's the biggest selling point of Game Pass. Even if it was a 6-month or 1-year delay.

I can't see any situation where they placate both sides. One side (likely the consumer side) will suffer some kind of negative consequence.

They need to be consistent which they haven't been.

Nintendo has always delivered what they do best, a console that delivers Nintendo games through its life span and maybe the odd new IP.

Sony, similar to Sega have always invested in new IPs that vary in successful sales, are quirky and or are successfully reviewed.

Xbox original did well in that front but then came the 360.

Front loaded with games and then last half of the gen pivoted away from games to shovelware and kinect.

Xbox One they started with TV TV and Kinect and then kinda had some games but then as the gen went on became less invested in games and started to move to Game pass and The Beast or Monster tactics.

This gen it was all about gamepass.

Every gen their focus has changed and therefore they have lacked consistency and what the brand is about. You just don't know what you will get and their PR is just that, it is PR. It often don't translate too much other than PR.

They need to pick something that is feasible and plausible and then stick to it.

I reckon had they stuck to what their plan was with the original Xbox and not gotten greedy and careless, Xbox would be in a totally different space right now.

On top of buying publishers they need to do what Sony does and pay other developers of to no release games in other machines..sharing is not caring in the gaming industry

Why do players stick to PlayStations?
I honestly do think part of it is the exclusives, weather that be for 1st party or 2nd party games.
Another thing is the genre of games, on both platforms.
Playstation does have more "one and done" type story games (jrpgs f.eks), which xbox users make fun of, but alot of people seem to enjoy.

Xbox needs to do two things (your thinking):
1) add a claim option (keep game forever, even with sub running out), for games you've beaten with Game Pass.
2) offer games exclusively inside Game Pass for at least one year. Not offering them for purchase. They can then sell them like this on all platforms (Nintendo, Steam, PlayStation). Making it possible but costly to avoid Game Pass. 

That seems crazy to me.
You would probably need to increase gamepass prices by a factor of like x3-5 to pay for all that.
Also any game that comes out, flops in reviews, will not benefit from early adopters, that buy it. This would add risk to developements, and you've seen xbox's track record.  Imagine they do that with Call of Duty. That would anger so many users, some might be then forced to adapt, others will just go "I guess this is how CoD dies" and ignore it.  This could destroy alot of valuable IP / studios.  It just seems very risky to me.


Imagine instead of 9.99$ a month, it becomes 29.99$ or 49.99$ a month.
Xbox go, "sure Teno, you can have that, it costs 30-50$ pr month" do you take that deal? Will enough others? will it grow gamepass subs?

They've come out and said, part of the reason why, they dont like doing that, is they need to pay like 10 times the amount, playstation does, for timed exclusives. Simply because of install base, and how differntly games sale on both platforms.

Now their Series console is not selling, and its gap to the PS5 keeps growing, this is going to become the same or worse, than it was back in the Xbox One days. Where they changed their messageing about timed exclusives.

I visited an all you can eat restaurant recently that I visited before. I was surprised at the price hike and asked the staff about it. The patron told me that yes the price had gone up, but there was even more choice so actually it's better value now. I told him my belly remained the same size. I was now just paying more for even more food I never eat.

That's gonna be the situation with Gamepass. If Activizion Blizzard comes to the service day one, there is no way they would not need to increase the price. But here it's not my belly, but the time I can invest in playing games. More content will not make me play more games, I would just end up paying more for even more games I never play.

I think MS gets that there is a limit to how they can price Gamepass and a ceiling overall on how many subscribers they can get. Continuing their strategy in putting firsts party on Gamepass day one going forward, I believe simply is not viable for them for the amount of studio's and games there will be in the future.

Gamepass was a leftfield idea to try to turn the XBoxOne fortunes. I think now, they'll step away from day one Gamepass release as the standard and it will be decided on case by case bases.

This is another very valid point.
People only have so many time to play games.
So the amount of games on gamepass, isn't as important as the quality of said games.

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.

Then you gotta factor in that Xbox itself is a big publisher now....

Its a tough nut to crack.

Gutting day-and-date alone, would probably fix alot of this.
However, that would then make alot of gamepass users, unhappy, or at the very least, not make gamepass grow as fast going forwards.
The upside:
Gamepass becomes much cheaper to run (because they also benefit from game sales, early on), easily allowing for lots and higher quality games on it.

Or go with jeno's idea:
Gamepass exclusivity (ei. no physical sales, until say 6-1year months down the line).
That would quickly grow gamepass....
the downside:
but probably require the gamepass prices to go up by alot (like 30-50$ pr month).

Changing Microsoft games to 6 months after launch might lead to a minor boost in sales for those games but would hurt Game Pass. Most people would probably wait 6 months, it's not like it's a year or years.
Microsoft needs to focus more on making appealing software, no matter when it drops on Game Pass.

1) My first point claiming games, doesn't need to be easy or limitless. They could limit it to 1 game per month and even require a special achievement or the "platinum" treatment, which would take a while for most games and less than 3% of players usually qualify for it. A managable risk, but something that strengthen's the platform, because player might start to buy more games on the platform.

2) Well I think it is clear, that they signed contracts with all major publishers for 10 years. Call of Duty isn't part of my plan here. Not before 2033. I also agree it's too risky for any multiplayer title. But without exclusive content, Game Pass can't grow fast enough. Game Pass is a scalable business because it relies on their in house studios. At 90-150 million subscribers the risk is decreasing rapidly. Even if it burn's some cash It needs to be achieved rather quickly.  It's often enough to have one hit up your sleeve to pay for the failures. Look at Ubisoft. Assassins Creed and some Far Cry releases are paying all their bills. Xbox also would gain a 12 month period for a "second" launch window when let's say Avowed comes to all other platforms. And looking at Cyberpunk. A good 2.0 update with DLC can work wonders on even a mediocre launched game.

Edit:

3) Since you added another line. My two short ideas are as mentioned above just directions, not fleshed out and defined in detail yet. But of cause they can't raise the prices, before they achieved at least 100 million subscribers. Growth has to be prioritized. Than they can raise their pricing. But not before people even start using it. I think core users often underestimate, that the most profitable GP users, pay but almost don't play.

You don't have to eat the buffet.  You can still sit down and just order what you want to eat, no-one is forcing you into the buffet line.