Not sure if I am glad Bethesda is now part of Xbox. Games will still be on pc and all and I am not against buying an Xbox, but I remain skeptical as to how they are planning to recoup 7.5 billion dollars, that is almost as much as Disney paid for both the entirety or Marvel and Star Wars together, as a frame of reference (which includes licences for everything, also games). That and their investments into gamepass have been so high, that I am very skeptical as to how it will look in a couple of years.
As an example, I have already experienced it several times that it is significantly cheaper (like 20 euros) to buy a game of the year edition on the PS4 than to buy the DLC I want to play seperately of a game that is on gamepass. Somewhere they will want to see money for games thay cost more than 100 million to make and that historically sell a couple of million of copies at full price. I feel that if gamepass is going to a point where new AAA releases are on it day one frequently, either the market has to be massive or they will resort to other business tactics.
Anyways, Microsoft is going all in for sure.
It's funny, who got 2 consoles fighting to be the very best. While the PC, is just sitting there while he gets his usual check-up. And Nintendo is happily, like a little school kid, skipping by, waving, and moving on.
New models such as gamepass will affect the entire market though. If gamepass becomes a/the consumer standard, then how games on it are monitized will be how they are designed. AAA games in particular, offcourse, because that in the end is where the big investments are at. And offcourse gamepass is very much a PC platform as well. Seeing how much e-meltdowns there were due to the Epic games store selling exclusive games (which was strange to me, to be fair, you can launch it on the same device), I'd say PC gamers care what happens to Steam and how games on PC are monitized on the long run.
Music, film, tv, news, book industries etc. all have gone through extensive changes with the launches of similar platforms, with both positive and negative aspects. That is why I use the words skeptical and "not sure" instead of thinking it will definitely be a bad thing, because I don't know how the market will change. But at this rate I do expect that the market will go through major changes. And whatever service/brand comes out on top will define/decide a lot of things. At least that is what usually happens in these shifts.
In the end I will buy whatever has my favourite games, but I wonder how well subscription models align with 100+ million dollar 20-30 hour AAA games focused on singleplayer on the long term (the gaming equivalent of major film blockbusters, their businessmodels are very front loaded). As those are the games I enjoy the most.
For the time being I hope Microsoft will tell Bethesda studios to fix their shitty tech.