Game Pass er en kæmpe succes for Microsoft, og ligeledes lader forbrugere til at være ovenud tilfredse med udvalget for pengene - faktisk står Sony til at introducere noget lignende via det nye PlayStation Plus her inden længe.
Men spørger du en tidligere Microsoft-chef, Ed Fries, der var en del af det originale Xbox-hold helt tilbage i starten af 00'erne inden hans exit i 2004, så er han faktisk lidt "bange" for den indflydelse og effekt Game Pass kan have på branchen.
I et interview med Xbox Expansion Pass siger Fries, at abonnementer som Spotify har ødelagt musikbranchen, og at det kan gøre ham bange:
"The one thing that they're doing that makes me nervous is Game Pass. Game Pass scares me because there's a somewhat analogous thing called Spotify that was created for the music business. When Spotify took off it destroyed the music business, it literally cut the annual revenue of the music business in half. It's made it so people just don't buy songs anymore. People don't buy songs on iPhone for example, because why would you? They're all on your subscription service app. Apple's said they're going to take away buying songs because no one's buying them any more. So we have to be careful we don't create the same system in the game business. These markets are more fragile than people realise. I saw the games industry destroy itself in the early 80s. I saw the educational software business destroy itself in the mid-90s... they literally destroyed a multi-billion dollar market in a few years."
Han slår fast at han som forbruger elsker Game Pass, ligesom at han elsker Spotify, eftersom at han nu får en del mere for sine penge, samlet set, men at i det lange løb skaber det nervøsitet.
Det skal dog siges at Fries' påstand er blevet kritiseret hårdt af blandt andet musikjournalist og analytiker Tim Ingham fra Music Business Worldwide, der siger til VGC at overgangen til streaming har været et kæmpe plus for musikbranchen.
"Spotify didn't cut the music business in half - piracy did. Spotify, and the cloud-based technology on which it relies, actually gave music fans a more convenient, legal and monetised alternative to piracy. And then, once consumers were comfortable with that, Spotify (and its rivals) performed a further miracle: upselling hundreds of millions of music consumers to subscription via monthly billing... despite the fact that the same free alternative, music piracy, remains available in any browser!"
Han påpeger desuden at musikbranchen er vokset 73% siden Spotifys introduktion i 2011.