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this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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Gamepass isn't cloud gaming, though. It's a game subscription, but cloud gaming is only optional and only available for a subset of games. All of the games however can be downloaded and are played locally.
It’s optional for now.
I’d only take this as a valid point if you could point to any games succeeding in spite of being cloud only. When Stadia tried it, it kneecapped them.
You are right, that there are no games now bound to the cloud right now. But look at Microsoft business model in other areas. It’s all software as a service, web apps in the cloud, that businesses pay a subscription to use. It’s great way to extract value from customers, because it gets harder and harder to move away from these platforms. Your data, save games, your friend list, your ability to play multiplayer and so on, get increasingly locked to one platform, which makes it harder to move. And then Microsoft can just collect rent, they don’t have to innovate or compete on a free market. This trend is sometimes called techno-feudalism.