Games

Yeah, but the headline cuts out that part where they're not growing. I think more customers can do math than console manufacturers are willing to admit, or at least more than Sony and Nintendo are willing to admit. The word's out about how much that online subscription is going to cost you for multiplayer over the years, and if they were interested in running a console the way that consoles have always been run, the lowest hanging fruit to keep that going and to be competitive would be to remove that cost; they're making it up in digital sales anyway. My guess is that once the new Xbox is just a disguised Windows PC, that will be when they drop the requirement of Live/Game Pass for online multiplayer.

Also worth noting that sometime in the past week or so, maybe, they've changed their messaging on Game Pass. They put so much of their weight behind that thing trying to become the Netflix of video games, as a way of pivoting in a world where they can't compete with PlayStation by doing what PlayStation does, only to end up with a fraction of the subscriber base that they expected to have. It's a lucrative base nonetheless, but now that they're decidedly not the Netflix of video games, they're just leaning into being the industry's largest publisher.