this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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No, I think they're going to continue adding massive value to the Gamepass system to keep it afloat and competitive. Maybe a WoW sub is a bit of a stretch, but basically all other games will thrive on the platform. StarCraft 2 is still the benchmark RTS for competitive play. Overwatch and Diablo are not my cups of tea but they would also make great offerings on the platform. Most of Blizzard's core franchises outside of WoW itself are heavily MTX'd out the ass, battle passes, cosmetics, whatever - even if it's included in the gamepass sub, the theoretical higher volume of players will likely compensate for unit sales through the aforementioned MTX.
They are going to play classic Microsoft and destroy their competition in this way, then they will do what they want when they have a stranglehold on the market.
I don't think Sony is going to give up that easily, nor is Nintendo or Valve.
Microsoft has tried, with sheer force of capital to buy out these players and couldn't understand when they were denied. In tech you can do big mergers and acquisitions with sheer capital but Nintendo is a pride and joy crown jewel of Japanese industry, and no amount of money would allow MS to buy them.
MS' big push for accessibility and cloud gaming makes them ultimately platform agnostic over time, because they are leveraging the cloud technology to deploy their catalogue on any machine with an internet connection and a screen.
"Classic" Microsoft, the EEE (envelop, extend, extinguish) strategy that made them assholes through the 90s and early aughts hasn't been nearly as prevalent in the current Nadella era. More often than not MS has been forking open source projects or simply contributing to them in their own ways rather than building proprietary systems.