You know the world is f’d up when you can agree with Michael Pachter

Wouldn't it be the case of Pachter finally agreeing with parts of us rather than we agreeing with him?

I remember vividly that back in the day when GP was introduced and shaped further, many of us were saying that it's a great service on one hand. But were also already skeptical, too, as to how Microsoft would be able to keep the service running financially in the future.

Or/and how it would affect studios and game development in general.

As of March 2026, I think we have the answers some of us anticipated back then, when it was still Pachter who had forecasted «100 million subscribers».

Likely the next Xbox will have a premium price tag so they have some profit margin on the low numbers they sell. We all know that the bulk of revenue will come from 3rd party sales on other devices and perhaps some from game pass.

And even Gamepass flopped. The end goal of Gamepass was to be hegemonic, to kill game purcahses with subscriptions. But that never happened. Game sales are still thriving, Gamepass' subscriber count has stalled, it's costly for MS and studios and its price is increasing.
The purchase of Activision allows them to hide Gamepass' failure. Not suprising that gamepass was removed from Nadella yearly bonus, they knew they would never hit the targets.