Seriously though, this is uncharted territory. Bethesda are a massive publisher, to have all of their games Day 1 on GP is such a massive boost in trying to grow that service. The value proposition on Xbox overall is so hilariously one-sided, especially in lieu of Sony hiking the price and in turn fucking over their biggest market i.e. Europe with €79.99 titles.
Folks are also under-selling the impact it'll have on overall industry, this is not necessarily restricted to console wars. If Microsoft are being this aggressive, it's only natural they'll regain some of that market share from Sony. But, in overall scheme of things, it's a massive push in trying to legitimatize subscription and may result into massive publisher acquisitions akin to this such as Square, Capcom, From, CDPR and host of other publishers. Especially, with Google, Apple, and Amazon looking to invest big in gaming industry.
A massive reason as to why PS4 sold 100m+ is down to 3rd party impact, it was the de facto choice for your every big 3rd party title and had exclusivity deals with almost all major publishers. With GamePass being such a huge disruptor to traditional business model, how will the masses react having to pay $69.99 to play these games on other platform? When they could play them for $10 a month? And in certain select cities in US, without even any investment via xCloud? I already see impact of Game Pass among hardcore Xbox fans, they are reluctant to buy games at full price and wait for them to hit Game Pass in future, or just drop extremely cheap in price before they purchase. How will casuals react when they come to realization of this huge value proposition which Xbox have? And how will it affect their other gaming purchase? These are all legitimate questions which are associated with an acquisition like this, which is trying to legitimize and push subscription model for gaming. Next-gen is going to be a fascinating watch as it develops.
Also in light of this news, I hope this "anti-consumer" non-sense is done for good, and I don't have to ever hear it from anyone on gaming forums.