StingingVelvet: Maybe some obscure catalog titles I guess, but anything they can keep exclusive to Game Pass they're going to do it. This move and all their other acquisitions lately have been about building a huge library of games that make people pay that $10-15 a month to them in perpetuity. Their goal is to be the Netflix of games, it's pretty clear. I'm sure they'll keep selling stuff on Steam for a while, but eventually it'll be all about Gamepass.
Carradice: Interesting! It goes back to the old "turning ownership of software/digital media into paid service", isn't it? And streaming games instead of having them installed is a parallel thrend that reinforces the service paradigm. The more I hear about all that, the more I love my GOG
How do you think that Steam, Epic, GOG, and others will stand up to that?
GOG won't do much. It doesn't need to. This store's existence is the pure antithesis of what Microsoft is trying to do. In fact, this kind of "monopoly" will make some people migrate towards GOG as they see it as an alternative to the advance of removal of consumer ownership.
As a for steam and epic, I suppose they've more to suffer, since in my opinion a vast majority of their user base consists of casual gamers who only care about playing games regardless of whether they buy them or rent them.