It actually floors me that people don't understand this. It's the tried and tested subscription model business plan.

Create a compelling service > gain market share > crush competition > ramp up prices and introduce anti-consumer policies

And contrary to popular belief, GamePass isn't making money. There's a reason MS are very tight-lipped about saying whether it's profitable or not, and why they hide GamePass within another segment in their financials.

Shit, look at the FTC leaks where Phil Spencer says nowhere near enough people have subscribed to GamePass to make it viable (no wonder they want it on more platforms!). Microsoft will up prices.

And people here will say "yeah but then I'll cancel, I already have a large game library" - yeah, you do. But a kid in 10 years that has no games library, only GamePass? He won't say "man, another GamePass price hike? I'm gonna cancel", because his choice is between another, say, £18 per month (I just went with what I was paying for Netflix, idk what it'll be), and having to drop several hundred/possibly over £1k just to get all the games he wants back. Games he will probably have to buy across 3+ different launchers.

Microsoft is in it for the long haul. Subscription Office software, GamePass, rumours of subscription options in Win12. MS doesn't want your money now, they want money from you continuously and from any family you build (remember: if you have kids, they'll use this stuff too, and you'll be paying for it... until they're an adult, then they'll be hooked on it and probably pay for it thereafter).

You'll be paying until the day you die and your children will pay from being 18 until they die.

That's the plan. It's sinister.

I do see that since it’s Ubisoft, they could still push for games on the subscription service but in reality I could see the games being loaded up with micro transactions.

Or it could turn into a convoluted game demo service, where you can play a portion of a game then they hit you with a pay wall, and since you’ve already played X% of a game they could view it as more likely to buy.

They got Relic to make a surprsiingly faithful Age of Empires, people do like Microsoft Flight Sim, that type of thing.

"Their biggest games have been IP conceived and developed externally" so not really a counter argument to phillaholic when you mention two games outsourced to external developers.