It's true that, Xbox Game Pass basically lets you get all of the games from Xbox Game Studios at a low price. So economically, it saves you money.
However, what I don't understand is how the Xbox hardcore fanbase is continuing to cheer on Xbox management while they are openly lying to their heavily invested installed base.
A few years ago, Xbox promised exclusive games that strengthens the argument that you and other people should buy Xbox hardware.
A year ago, this promise was thrown out the window, in lieu of a massive 76 billion dollar loan that Xbox owes Microsoft management for buying Activision Blizzard.
So Xbox has pivoted, and now all the games they promised would be Xbox exclusive, are no longer exclusive.
The narrative has changed, particularly from voices in the Xbox community that are supposed to be speaking FOR the community. "This is a good thing", "This gives MS/Xbox more money", "In the future, everything will be an Xbox anyway".
It's very unusual how all these mouthpieces for Xbox can suddenly change their tune. I guess, for them to keep getting free Xbox swag or for them to keep getting invited to the fancy Xbox on-site parties in the USA, they're going to tow the company line because it's in their best interest.
What sucks about these Xbox influencers is, they aren't thinking about the rest of us. The ones who DON'T have a youtube channel. The ones who are heavily invested on the Xbox console. The normal human beings who decided to buy an Xbox instead of a Playstation, and now can't easily shift out to another ecosystem.
That's what bothers me about the landscape of the Xbox community today. We should be speaking out more against what Microsoft is doing here. But, I think, the Xbox team is now focused on job security over integrity and honesty with their customers.
They promised exclusive games, and now, that promise is just dust.
Why do Exclusive games matter? In the same way as streaming services have exclusive content, you have to justify investing in the ecosystem. Yes there's value in the savings you get from Game Pass. But exclusivity has a side effect on the ecosystem that most people just ignore --- and that's just attracting new players to grow the ecosystem further.
While an 'invested' person in Xbox won't have a problem and still be subbed to Game Pass anyway, over time, there will be people who will leave Xbox. Whether it's life circumstances or old age or many other possible reasons, you'll have people leaving the ecosystem and will never buy another system again.
At the same time, you have others who are on a different ecosystem, and in considering Xbox, they'll say, what can I get from Xbox that I can't get anywhere else?
While you can get savings via Game Pass, you can, honestly, still get savings elsewhere and actually own the games you want. Games get heavily discounted within a year's time, or in even shorter periods--- this is because there is just TOO MANY games now and people are spoilt for choice. You could literally just stick with PS4 and never be bored, and never need to upgrade for years. You could go on PC and just avoid paying a monthly fee for online play. There is just too much competition now for your time.
So how will Xbox win over new people when there are all these other platforms where there are exclusive games? This is actually the reason that just dropping exclusivity is going to damage the Xbox brand.
What would follow is that, the third-parties will see how Xbox is becoming more and more irrelevant. Worldwide, Xbox is not even being sold in a lot of stores, and with this lack of exclusive games, it just becomes less attractive to even stock the Xbox hardware. Why stock this, when all the other games can be bought on other platforms? This just compounds the issue of games skipping Xbox, because third-parties will see this and will just save development resources to work on platforms where there ARE better installed bases and availability in more countries.
Xbox Game Pass is so poorly marketed that you can still find videos of people shocked at the value of this service. Shocked in 2025. And this service is many years old already. With marketing this horrific on the Microsoft side, exclusive content would at least support the argument that buying an Xbox is still worth it. So Microsoft just shunning exclusives like this, they are setting up Xbox to be conveniently discontinued when the console installed base falls off a cliff.
So yes, the party is now, and the games are coming. What will you do when Microsoft decides to make the Xbox console the next Windows Phone or Zune? Are you really going to put your 'faith' in a company that can just turn on their fanbase on a Sunday afternoon? The only way that Microsoft will ever listen is if you start hurting their bottom line. Unfortunately, all the swag-seeking, social butterflies who make podcasts weekly, will not let go of their connection to Phil and Co., and will keep on towing the Microsoft company line, leading Xbox to keep declining in hardware sales, going even further down their 3rd place position in console gaming (is it fourth now? With SteamOS already beating them, Xbox is just disappearing into nothingness in the global sales arena).
All I'm saying is, if you are invested in the Xbox ecosystem, you can't support these actions of Xbox and Microsoft. If you do, you're helping the platform along to its eventual death.