It’s a little dramatic, but Microsoft may have altered the future of gaming with today’s announcement. The company revealed that the Xbox Game Pass, which launched last year, will soon feature Microsoft Studios games on launch day. This means that Xbox Game Pass subscribers will have full access to Sea of Thieves, the next Halo, Gears of War, and Forza, and many more exclusive titles the day they come out.

If that doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, it should. In the past, the one major thing that all Netflix-esque game services were missing were those big ticket titles. Sometimes they got them down the line, but none have managed to get them on launch day. Microsoft got around this by offering their own titles up, circumventing the hard-lined publishers altogether.

Essentially, this is similar to Netflix or Amazon promoting their own content on their platform first. Netflix and Stranger Things. Amazon and The Grand Tour. And now Microsoft and Halo. It’s not Netflix getting The Last Jedi on opening day, but it’s a step in that direction. 

The concept has always been there, it’s just that Microsoft are the first one’s to actually pull this off. The real question now, are gamers going to flock to the idea?

Gamers have always been a skeptical group when it comes to how they consume their games. A lot of people were highly against digital games and now look at where we’re at. Going back further than that, the idea of switching from cartridges to discs was not something many people liked initially, but this has the potential to be bigger than that.

The Xbox Game Pass, if it succeeds, could change the future of gaming, transforming it from a sellers market to a lenders one.

Make no mistake, people will always buy some games, just like people still buy some movies, but purchasing will become less and less the norm. After all, why do you need to own a game like ReCore or Cuphead. The truth is, the vast majority of people will beat those games (maybe) and never touch them again. Just like how people will watch the majority of movies or shows once and then never again.

To be fair, we’re a ways off from this, but it could happen sooner than you think, maybe even by the time the next generation of consoles debut. 

Xbox exec Phil Spencer hasn’t been shy about what he thinks the future of gaming will be. He sees a future were game streaming is likely to be the norm. For this prediction to come to fruition, subscription gaming services need to become a viable alternative to owning games. That’s why it isn’t a surprise to see Microsoft leading the charge here.