Microsoft is on the hunt for MAUs. They aren't looking to sell consoles. Sony is looking to sell as many consoles as it can because they know that they can generate money from the 1st party but also every console sold results in 3rd party software sales for which they generate revenue on B2P sales as well as MTX. Add in GaaS and you get even more revenue and operating income, but their goal is still selling more consoles.
Because Microsoft is focused on MAUs, the quality of individual games becomes a VERY different equation. Rather than Revenue per unit sold - minus cost = operating income you have Total revenue from MAUs minus operating cost = operating income.
One of the major focuses of running GamePass is limiting the cost that goes into it, especially if the growth isn't there.
Microsoft took 70 billion dollars and did they put it into increasing the quality of their games? No. They were trying to buy MAUs.
Phil Spencer said the quiet part out loud that we've been saying for years. Microsoft does not care about game quality, they care about quantity and MAUs. They need as much content as they can get to drive a diverse group of subscribers to join gamepass and keep gamepass. Do they want to put out bad games? Obviously not, but they aren't looking to spend 200 million on AAA bangers like God of War, not quarter after quarter, maybe you'll see that once a year or once every two years.
You're basically looking at maybe Fable and Elder Scrolls on top of Starfield at this point and I'm not sure that Fable actually qualifies, we'll see.
Jim Ryan said this specifically and people thought he was full of shit, but you can't run a subscription service with 200 million dollars titles unless it's growing faster than belief, that would HAVE to include PC subscriptions too, but what have we seen the last two years? Microsoft missing growth objectives. GamePass isnt' growing fast enough for Microsoft to sustain it, again why they wanted to buy ABK and essentially buy MAUs.