diskape
That’s a lot of negative “what ifs”. We can only judge by current situation not by what something may or may not become in the future. This is not Minority Report video games edition.
Shift towards DLC and worst, season passes and micro transactions, already happened without GP. We live in that world. GP here is not to blame.
No matter how you slice it - right now GP is tremendous value for gamers. It finally forced competitors to introduce some form of their own subscription service. Sony/Nintendo fans like them, and without GP these services would not exist.
I’m lucky to have 3 main consoles and PC. In order of money spend per game its highest PS5 > Switch > PC > XSX lowest. Exact reverse order is # of games played on given platform. I spend less for GP than for Netflix and get way more entertainment out of it. The other consoles are just for very expensive exclusives.
GP model allows me to find and try games that I normally wouldn’t buy. Forza Horizon 5, Immortality or Pentiment are just 3 examples.
Gamers benefited tremendously. GamePass is a game changer and having access to day 1 first (and often 3rd) party releases is amazing. Devs are happy too. Many publicly admitted that without GP some of their games would not launch at all.
While you are right that MS has released mostly duds this generation, it’s not fair to paint them as completely without any benefits to gamers or industry.
