Sure it has, you can anoint that demand to inflation. Which is applicable to pretty much every thing out there. And, you couldn't be further off the track when you say consumers never asked for it. The thirst for open-world games has long been a thing. You are dunking on Ubi, but take a look at how much their run of the mill open-world games sell. GTA V is on track to sell 100 million copies, sales of Red Dead 2 are almost double than the original in space of 18 months. Sonys wide-linear games can also be dubbed as semi-open worlds and are padded with content to justify the "value". SP games with content which of 7-8 hours like Uncharted: Drakes Fortune in 2007 simply aren't accepted by the consumers anymore, Order:1886 is a prime example, Quantum Break being another. These games had many issue, prime being lack of replayability and value.
MTX and DLC have become a staple, because consumers happily pay for it, same for online paywall. Just because selective few whine about these stuff on a gaming forum, doesn't mean it's a legitimate problem for masses who buy these games which make up 99.9%.
When I weigh the pros and cons, one outweighs the other. My original post was purely from financial perspective, how gaming industry would change if numbers don't align. This is without even delving into what type of games we are going to get, how it'll affect games inherent design and mechanics. Majority of stuff already announced by MS FP studios are laden with service elements, the games will be inherently designed to make sure the userbase stick. Which completely goes against your point about "bloat", if most games are intended to be padded with content over time, how many games will folks actually devote their time to? How does this phenomenon affect the purchasing decision of a consumer when they are being asked to pay $70-80 for a single game on other platforms, w/o any content being added over time? What will happen to the overall scope of these games? Time to dev is not going to be halved magically, you are going to see a lot of piece-meal games being put on the service, with rest of the game being added in the future.
Your entire argument is a giant contradiction, subscription based model will add to the bloat instead of eliminating it. This is already a thing with Netflix, Prime, Disney+ plus plethora of other services. There's far more mediocre stuff put out on a regular basis than actual good stuff, because the sub model relies on a stream of new content added with regularity. If 5-6 players get involved in gaming, it'll be a race to see who's able to put out more games at a better frequency. Quantity will take precedence over quality, this will apply to Sony too if they have no option but to join the race.
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