ZywyPL
Banned
70 bn is a difficult amount to make back, let alone "easily"
Depends on how the GP userbase will grow, which is all MS' plan is about. Let's say by the end of this year the number of subs increases by another 10M, up to 35M total, that's over 4BLN yearly revenue alone (well minus the 1$ conversions), or 350M monthly, which is enough to fund three AAA games. Then there are DLC and MTX, and on top of that people still buy games to own them regardless, as seen with FH5 and Halo, plus there's XBL needed to play online, or GPU to compensate that, so there are another additional streams of revenue. If GP grows to 50M, that's 6B each year just from the subs. With 100M, that's a billion monthly revenue just like that, I mean, it's pretty obvious why MS wants to go this route, that's a business model that doesn't rely on each individual game's success, just like Netflix which has its hit and miss shows/movies, but as long as that 200M+ userbase is there, they can experiment, try out new things, license 3rd party franchises and so on. But unlike Netflix, if a game really succeeds, then there's that additional revenue I mentioned earlier. Hence that's a business model they can bet those kind of investments on.
All in all, the seeds have been planted, but the results have yet to be seen, in theory they have the whole XB1 gen userbase already they can supply via xCloud, then there's Series X/S which sell out like crazy, which I recon will drive the GP growth the most, and then there's PC market, which I assume thanks to Blizzard titles will move quite a lot of subs on its own.