I’m also almost disappointed when a game I DO want comes to gamepass as I don’t get to add it to my physical collection because I simply cannot justify purchasing it if I can play on Gamepass, obviously.
You have a bunch of valid points, they're just very personal things. For me, I couldn't care less about owning games. I almost never replay games, we aren't having kids (so no "want to share my hobby with them when they're old enough reason") and I'm not a collector and hate clutter from things I don't use. One of my big regrets was accumulating so many CDs, DVDs and Blurays in my younger and dumber days. I hardly ever rewatch movies, put all but as select 20 or so Blurays into binders and recycled the cases a couple years back. I haven't even unzipped one of the binders since and the only of the 20 or so I kept cases and have on a shelf that I've watched are The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi this December before seeing the new one.
I just prefer new experiences to re-visiting old ones when it comes to media consumption. And I use that term deliberately as I'm not a person that cares much about art and just uses games, movies, shows, and books as "mostly shut the mind off and escape for a while" entertainment. That's likely a lot of why I so rarely revisit things.
What Gamepass games am I looking forward to? I guess the new Ori.
I'm kind of the same, but also Halo Infinite. I'll just never buy a year of Gamepass and just grab a month or three months here and there to play things that interest me. I grabbed a month to play the campaign in Gears 5 (don't like the MP). Just grabbed 3 months as it was a $1 on PC and I wanted to play A Plague Tale, the Outer Worlds, Children of Morta and a few other things.
With all these streaming services for games and movies/tv, there's really no reason to keep all of them all the time. Just subscribe for a while here and there, consume the content you want and cancel and jump to another one.
Also, the HDD space... you’ll max out your internal HDD in Just a couple days of having Gamepass. If Microsoft really wanted to push it they’d include at least an additional Large capacity standard HDD with the Series X.
This is moot for me as I hate jumping around among a bunch of games. At most I'll have 2 or 3 games going at once. Some single player thing I' playing on the TV, something on Switch I'm playing mostly/solely in handheld and maybe some online game I'm playing co-op online with real life friends.
With Gamepass I just download the 1 or 2 games I'm playing there and then uninstall and download another when I finish or drop it. Again, I don't replay games so I don't need continued access.
One last thing I’ll point out is with all these devalued games at my fingertips is that I tend to just play a little sample of games and drop it to move on to try the another rather quickly.
I only do that when I've played the games that got me to grab a month or three sub AND I haven't bought something else to jump into on PS4/PC/Switch. I like sampling games sometimes as it's a no-risk way to try somethings I wouldn't spend money buying. But I don't feel compelled to try a bunch of shit just because I have a cheap sub. I turn of auto renew when I sub to play a game or games that got me to subscribe and if there's nothing else I want to play it can just go unused for any remaining time.
Again, all your points are totally valid! Just pointing out how different peoples needs and wants are when it comes to how they experience games. Gamepass, and subscription services in general, are great for people like me who couldn't care less about owning or collecting things and consume media very disposably and rarely revisit anything. It's much less useful, if something they want at all, for people who love owning/collecting/revisiting things indefinitely.