Gamers in 3 years: Nooooo you can't force me to upgrade to the Ultra Deluxe tier if I don't want to watch ads every 20 minutes, also I'm already paying for 4 other game subscription services
Gamers in 3 years: Nooooo you can't force me to upgrade to the Ultra Deluxe tier if I don't want to watch ads every 20 minutes, also I'm already paying for 4 other game subscription services
It's more than just a good deal for consumers and offers a lot of benefits to developers as well.
For instance, a revenue stream from game pass provides developers the option of developing a live service game that doesn't have mtx, f2p, or other live service bullshit (sea of thieves, astroneer, and deep rock galactic for example). Redfall (lol) was able to remove all of it's mtx, f2p, and other live service hooks after it became first party (according to devs). Of course game pass games have the option of including all of that stuff still, despite being included in game pass (Minecraft dungeons also has paid expansions for instance, although still no mtx or f2p stuff).
It doesn't just benefit non-traditional design (like live service games without the live service revenue model) but also non-traditional content. Scorn would have never seen the light of day in its current form if it was distributed through traditional channels, regardless of publisher.
Even games as widely beloved and praised as Dead Space struggled to turn a profit. So they butchered the series to try and make it work before ultimately killing it off.
The scenario you describe is one possible doom outcome, for sure. I can't see the future to say for certain that will never happen. With that said, the current gaming industry is already an obnoxious capitalist hellscape, but outside of Xbox no one seems to be even considering a game pass like service and are instead sticking strong to the traditional model of mtx, f2p shit, and forced updates to new inferior paid versions of titles and all the other crap.
IMO, all of the above stuff is just as unacceptable as the scenario that you predict will happen, but they are part of the current awful status quo of the industry.
It seems more analogous to streaming services, and if it grows to be as big as the streaming industry is now, you are probably right and there will be a service that offers a tier that inserts banner ads or something. Regardless of the number of new streaming services that pop up though, I have not come close to missing the days of cable tv, nor have I gone back to purchasing physical media.
I approach this as someone who buys like 4 games a year max, always at discounts, and I also keep returning to the same titles for years and years. I look at the hundreds or even thousands of hours I've logged in some games and imagine many publishers would rather prefer that I would have paid for every single minute I spent in them.
I foresee a depressing future where many games will only be available as part of subscription services and subject to the usual rights and publisher related legal bullshit that gets games delisted all the time, which will be even worse if there's a big jump to things becoming more cloud-based.
When something becomes unlisted on Steam, those who bought it can still download the game, and if that fails, in most cases there's still piracy. I can still get cracked and pirated versions of AVP2 or No One Lives Forever despite legal fuckery having kept them off every digital storefront ever
I guess I'm someone who would have played way more games if I had the money. 4 new games a year was about where I was and is how I justified the initial purchase.
Unless one of the games that you are playing is one that benefitted from paying it's bills with game pass instead of mtx, there probably isn't much that you are benefiting from or will benefit from a game pass service.
Selling licenses directly is a huge source of revenue for both game publishers and video content publishers and I don't see why they would ever say no to being sent money in exchange for an executable. Do some TV shows not release blu rays? I honestly don't know because I only really see the big name ones because I don't really look at physical media anymore. I assume there are probably some shows that didn't get a physical media release right?
Anyway, I feel like we would have already seen that in video content already. Hell, game pass itself sells individual licenses directly to users from within the app itself, and I don't know what would compel someone to ever switch that off.