The genuine question I have is whether that is sustainable for the industry. Spotify for a tenner a month seems great value too until you realise that smaller artists aren't getting anything resembling a fair cut.
We're in a bit of a weird place now where games in the future will be tied exclusively to a service rather than just a platform.
Very true and going by what Phil Spencer has said at the moment its all about growing subs. They currently have around 20 million subs, with the new releases at the end of year coming, word of mouth and Xcloud being on streaming sticks/TV apps and browsers in a few months this will grow pretty fast.
They have already said they don't care where you play as long as its a platform that has GamePass, this will be on so many devices come the summer. Keeping customers subscribed is going to be the key, hence why the spending spree to get developers onboard making content monthly.
The attach ratio on the consoles to games is something like 2-3 so keeping a customer subscribed into the eco system over the lifetime is how its sustainable. Then add on the DLC sales, controllers,consoles,etc it soon mounts up.
Just like gamers expecting Bethesda's heavy hitters on PS5, it's not going to happen. A GamePass sub is worth way more to MS than a sale to Sony. You don't spend 7.5billion to keep the status quo, they could have paid magnitudes lower than that to get them on GamePass day 1. It's also about user engagement devs from Arkane have already come out and said the massive influx in gamers playing their games since they all got added to GamePass.
