Folks egg on Phil Spencer here thinking him to be a blithering idiot, he is anything but. If you ask me, he is an absolute genius.
Over the last few years, he has successfully whipped a narrative around Microsoft being the most pro-consumer company and Xbox offering unmatched value in gaming. While ensuring, their cash cow in form of Xbox Live Gold remains untouched. It's hilarious that all these journalists/influencers who continually invite him for over to talk about future of Xbox, never ask tough questions. As to why, Xbox segregated GamePass and GamePass Ultimate, whereby Gold subscription is required to access MP on games already on the service? Especially when competition doesn't. Or, as to why, even after all these years, and so many pro-consumer moves, they haven't pulled down the online paywall to play free-to-play multiplayer games such as Fortnite, Warzone etc. When....once again competition doesn't.
He has successfully embedded the value of Xbox GamePass with eco-system as a whole, they appear to be so intricately mixed that these issues are brushed aside. Any argument on the forum is killed immediately by "but 100+ games for $10'! or 'it's free on Gamepass" thanks to an army of zealots online. Yet, for the masses whose intake over one year is limited to F2P games, or to yearly iteration of titles such as Call of Duty, FIFA, NFL etc. the cost of gaming on Xbox is rising exponentially. With the hike in price of Xbox Live Gold, and 12 month sub being killed. The cost has doubled from $60 to $120 to access online MP. MS are doing this deliberately so as to move these users onto their subscription service, well for one thing the Ultimate subscription is even costlier and set them $180 for an year. But, they'll "sweeten" this in form of an introductory price, which will be shoved in each and every thread in the near future. Only for these prices to disappear (much like 1$ deals) once the base has swollen. It won't be long, once the gaming space is also flooded with array of sub services from other publishers. But, by the time GamePass would be in position of NetFlix, biggest sub service in the market, and even with 3rd party content slowly dwindling down over time, the cost of sub itself would continually go up.
Writing is on the wall, yet so many choose to bury their head in the sand. It's ironic, because these gamers are able to find the most obscure of details around console hardware or a software from the smallest corners of the internet. Yet, continue to choose to be ignorant on what is shaping up to be a pretty grim and expensive future in console space.