"Today, PlayStation revealed that its PS5 has sold 40 million units. Microsoft doesn’t share hardware numbers typically, but court documents, math, and slides from an ID@Xbox in Brazil seem to suggest the Xbox Series X|S line-up is around 20-23 million units sold globally. That essentially puts the PS5 at a 2:1 advantage against Xbox, but perhaps the split is even worse than that beneath the surface. "
If you don’t understand or can’t figure why a service like Game Pass requires a fee, then you are either woefully ignorant of how technology and security works, or you are being willfully disingenuous motivated by loyalty to a specific platform.
That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. These services cost actual money and MS historically has had a significantly more reliable online service and a huge reason why is the Live charge. Sony only managed to have a reliable service when they started charging for it. I feel like a lot of people with the sentiment above didn’t play games when online CONSOLE multiplayer was born.
I was talking about the ability to simply play games that I already purchased online. Game Pass was a different paragraph and context.
If you really think Microsoft or Sony requires this yearly subscription fee to keep the service running, just look at equivalent PC services like Steam (or, you know, Xbox Live online play, which is free on PC) and realise how wrong you are. Microsoft and Sony get a big chunk of game sales (30%+), they are fine.
Actual game servers are hosted by the game publisher, not by Microsoft or Sony (unless it’s a first party title, of course). Publishers don’t get a single piece of the subscription.