Nerd Strangler
Banned
I'm not talking about raising fees per se, but just not allowing discounts via annual subs.
You don't think MS has substantial costs around creating and maintaining Xbox Live?
Not allowing discounts is the same as jacking up fees.
I am sure there are substantial costs. But steam has those costs, epic game store has those costs, stadia has those costs and much more. And while stadia may be crap now, it probably won't be crap forever. And I don't think Microsoft wants to be in a position 10 years from now where they are watching game streaming grow exponentially and google dominate the market because they were too concerned about their xbox live gold revenues back in the day.
A lot of gamers consider stadia a joke, but I don't think Microsoft does. And their big ace in the hole against Stadia is that you have the option of playing the games locally. But that becomes much less of an ace in the hole if customers gotta pay an extra $100-120 annually just to do so.