You mean the games that you only get to keep while you have it and that 90% of people only have so they can be allowed to use their internet which they already pay for? Lmao. If anything XBL/PS+ are where they make up for some of the loss on the system itself. Microsoft already started they're either selling at cost or for a slight loss on the hardware itself.
Swing and a miss
How's it a miss? Paid XBL was bullshit when M$ started it and it was bullshit when Sony adapted it too. People will say bullshit like "I actually have it primarily for the games!" Which yeah that may be true for you but for the majority it isn't. Look back to when Sony introduced PS+ on the PS3, I think I had like 3 people on my friend list who had PS+ and now that it's mandatory for online play nobody on my list that has a PS4 doesn't have it. And back on the PS3 it was giving consistently great games and good discounts each month and the quality of games now is pretty shit and largely indie garbage, and it's not like XBL games have been much better. When you buy your $500 console XBL is basically a way for them to actually be charging you $560 for it by locking functionality behind a paywall. Yeah the game service is fine and all, and I'm sure a bunch if people would still have it because it's almost like paying to get a surprise each month but as a whole I don't know how anyone can unironically defend this as a good thing. I mean if you stick to the 10 year long gen that's $600 over the lifetime of the system just to be able to play online... And if it's for kids or something and say you have a couple kids each with their own account on the system you've got to pay for both of them. It's scummy as fuck and I don't know why anyone would defend it.
So that's at the very least, $600 over the lifetime of the system that you wouldn't have had to pay on most previous generations of console or on PC. And you can argue about the "free games" all you want but the few gems you get each year in the mountains of shit, and gems that are usually years old at that, just isn't worth it to me. You could cut out the middle man and cut all the shit games and just buy what you want yourself on PC which the games will be even cheaper on than on consoles. So $600 on top of the already $500 launch price of the Xbox One and now the launch price of the X model. Do you really think $1100 for a console and then the "privilege" to be able to use it's full functionality over it's lifetime is fair???
You're not talking about the right thing. He said Xbox Game Pass. Not Xbox Live.
Even then your argument about Xbox Live isn't completely accurate. All accounts on an Xbox One with Gold can play online as long as one of them is subbed.