Gamepass is great, but the push to change games from a product to a service is most definitely not.
So the thing people are concerned about is once microsoft beefs up gamepass enough they can stop selling physical games, and maybe even digital games further down the road, they 100% absolutely will. they are also trying to make any other netflix-style game service less viable than theirs by slowly making established multi-platforms microsoft exclusives. This is their plan, with room to pivot if they need to. If you don't care about physical ownership, healthy competition, or game preservation, then this doesn't matter to you. but it should.
as a slight side-note, gamepass is similar to netflix in most ways, except in this case, microsoft is trying to own the rights to everything rather than work out distribution agreements. Also, rather than coming up with compelling new franchises to support the service, they'd rather just buy entire companies with popular franchises. not great for consumers as the consildation of power ramps up and up. Again, gamepass is a good service, but the push to make the gaming industry about games-as-a-service, rather than products, is incredibly anti-consumer. Remember what sony did with P.T. and removing it from people's consoles without consent? we're trying to avoid the industry from having that kind power over every aspect of gaming.
There are other concerns, which are more game-specific rather than gaming in general. in this specific case, they can say they won't do something, but unless it's in a legal contract, their word means less than nothing. even contracts will be quickly broken if the benefits outweight the costs. Let me put it this way: would you see any issues with this game becoming a Gamepass exclusive in the future?
microsoft, sony, nintendo, etc. really don't care about games. the developers do, sure, but not those actually in charge. they just care about profits. that's just what companies do. if they can screw over gamers to make a buck, and maybe won't hurt profits in the long-run, they will in a heart-beat. it's important to pay attention to the long-play moves to consolidate power and push out competition, and how it affects consumers and the gaming industry in the end.
tl;dr: consolidation of power by those who are trying to corner a market is not something that will benefit consumer rights, in a variety of ways. consumer ease would improve, potentially, but that is not the same thing as consumer rights.
Alright so I was writing a fleshed out answer for like 20 minutes and I had a bsod so I'm just going « fast » (in the way I'm not trying to synthetise much, sorry about that it might be too damn long) with what I remember :
I don't think they are going to go full digital and full service. If they go full digital then the story of the Xbox One will probably repeat, and it'll make a good reason for people to stick to Playstation. Full gamepass isn't really a solution either I feel because games do get out of the service (especially solo games, and there are some good surprises, originally I thought it would be only services and stuff that have an incentive to keep you playing them but no) and when they do, Xbox tells you can buy them at a discount if you want to keep playing them. So because I'm on PC I have no incentive since I prefer to get my games on Steam for a multitude of reasons, but on Xbox it can be a great deal.
I can see why games being more services than products is bad but it's been here since Fortnite at least and it's not going away soon, so I'd rather have things be more practical. Gamepass allows me to play some games like Sea of Thieves whenever I want, but also discover good solo pieces and indies. If I can have Call of Duty, that I always kinda liked but despised having to buy a full priced game for it to be irrelevant the next year, especially when Sony has been making deals so the Playstation version has more content and modes ? Screw that
I don't think I care if Microsoft is buying companies instead of talking about distribution deals. The end result is the same : the games are exclusive and I can't play them. Well, in the case of Xbox I can because I play on PC and Switch. Sony has been striving on this for decades now, and sometimes they don't even publish the games, they just spend some bucks. The end result seem similar to me.
Sony did not delete PT from people's consoles. Konami delisted the game, therefore if you deleted the game you couldn't download the game. People who kept it could still play it. Tho I've heard some had seen the game disappear and others said it's due to a bug that has been reported some years ago that would sometimes delete games, so it doesn't seem to be targeting PT specifically.
So far, games being exclusive to gamepass doesn't really exist you still have a way to buy them on the store (and physically most of the time, but you don't get the gamepass discount I guess), so Xbox exclusives ? Well it's the same as Playstation or Nintendo exclusives. I would prefer if there were no exclusives but that's not how that works, so gamepass exclusives ? That depends on how the game keeps it's monetization. If a game like Starfield went only gamepass ? That would be very weird to deny people the ability to pay for a single player game and yeah I would have an issue with that, but I find that also very very unlikely to happen since the service is bound to get more expensive, and even if it does not I'm pretty sure some people will be mad they can't get the game on Steam.
I agree, companies like those don't care much about games, that's true. But we do, and when Microsoft does fuck up people are always there to tell them and if they want to exist they still have to cater to us. Which makes me think that's unlikely they'll suddenly turn completely evil and 100% gamepass only in the foreseeable future. Apart from speculation and fears, I have no substantial elements to conclude that, but I definitely can say it's not completely unlikely. But we're getting even further in it, doesn't matter if Microsoft gets ABK or not.
I only shill for myself. I need Sony to get hurt a bit, for decades they haven't been taking any risks. Blocked crossplay for a while because they wanted to find a way to monetize it first (did it only when Epic paid them), always the first to increase prices when they can. Following Microsoft years later on PC ports because they just follow. Microsoft has to take risks to grow, Sony is just relying on what they have, and I don't like that. I'd rather have the buyout to conclude, so Sony has to take risks and maybe they'll start using their resources to build an alternative to CoD ? Many people have been calling out CoD for SBMM and stuff. It's the time to build a game that would cater to this. XDefiant is already coming up, the absence of CoD on Playstation might make it even bigger on Playstation. That's why Microsoft taking out CoD of Playstation isn't clear-cut.
People who only play games like Fifa and Call of Duty might get an Xbox instead of a Playstation, but Sony still has exclusives, so people might actually have to make a choice when it comes to their console. So far it's just obvious that Playstation is the thing to get between the two. I want that fight to be more serious than ever.
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