I can see Microsoft cutting the price of Game Pass Basic to $5 per month (and have Ultimate stay at $15 per month) which includes Streaming and Multiplayer access.
But I think to answer the statement Phil provided. It's likely sustainable for Microsoft since they are large enough to sustain the losses until it becomes a profit for them. But for smaller companies like EA, Nintendo, Sony etc it will be very difficult to sustain the service, especially at the output of Game Pass. Disney will be losing Billions 4.5 Billion in 2020 and Disney taking 2.5 Billion of that number, and that's not for putting their content day 1 on Disney+. For smaller companies in the gaming industry, the burden is simply too big. To avoid the losses you either.
- Have a high price for the subscription
- Increase in Microtransactions, MTX
- Reduce the amount of output from third parties and first-party released on the service.
Larger companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Disney, for example, can ignore this and absorb the short term losses because they are large enough and their core businesses are not affected by this.
EA, gaming is their core business for example only releases 4 games per year onto their service.
So in summary the key for smaller companies in the gaming industry to sustain their service is to try to absorb the short term losses in the service which could be in the Billions. Moviepass is an example that couldn't survive the short term losses made. If they survive the losses long enough, they will eventually gain a profit.
which will inevitably happen when they stop making it available so cheaply.
it depends if they are grandfathered. For existing customers, it's likely any price increases will only affect new customers and not existing customers. But we don't know how it will affect subscriber numbers since we don't have any numbers at the first place and we aren't likely going to get them anytime soon.
