I wonder how that works out financially. I mean subscription models only work if there are only very few competitors in the game. Netflix had to make huuuge investments to destroy any rivals that were cropping up (and were bleeding money doing so for years. I dont know if they have actually made any real money by now). The only other streaming services come from gigantic companies like Disney or Amazon.
Surely MS has the power to stamp out competitors, or at least make it very unlikely for any newcomers to get involved (amazon, apple, google), because the barrier of entry is just so damn high (which would actually benefit sony as well, at least for a while).
The problem is the transitional period were they not only have to invest a lot of money, but are actually loosing sales from traditional purchases and licencing. Surely EA, Activision, Ubi, Bethesda, etc. will try their own services as well and pull out of gamepass. It will take a few years for the market to consolidate.
They could try to become somewhat independent of 3rd parties just like Nintendo/HBO. Or try a mixed approach like Netflix.
Maybe MS will be the Netflix of gaming and Sony the HBO of gaming. HBO meaning fewer but usually higher average quality. Please dont be triggered by the quality statement, the reason they would be higher on average is because Sony might not have 3rd party stuff on their service. You would basically subscribe to their 1st party studios only (which will probably have a high average quality and could also come with some kind of Sony Music and Sony pictures bundle), while MS has a lot of different stuff from 1st party to 3rd party and independent with quality ranging from really high to what the actual fuck am i looking at.
Now that I think of it, Sony going the walled market approach for subscriptions seems like their thing. Subscribe for 18 bucks a month and you get all Sony games, music, movies and TV shows (do they produce any TV shows right now?). It would be less aggressive towards big 3rd party publishers and it gives the whole package a higher value without actually needing to pump up output significantly on any of their ventures. Its just a new way to pay for all their already existing products and services. I mean in my head that makes sense. One company going the more wide approach of having its own stuff plus whatever they can buy from 3rd parties (probably for a limited time) and the other one offering a walled market oft their own properties (be aware that I think that these subscriptions are different to the whole game streaming thing that might or might not take off in the next few years. At least for the moment. So Playstation Now and XCloud are different subscription models compared to Gamepass and whatever Sony might call their thing).
Well at the very least its going to be very interesting so see where it goes from here. I think both companies have some compelling arguments to make for themselves. MS still has to show me games that I actually want to play (sorry, but I dont like sci-fi shooter games), but hey, never say never.
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