Don' know what your metric for success here is, but by all accounts ~20,000,000 subs to a subscription service in ~4 years, especially when mired with the "no gamez" accusation is pretty incredible.
Completely agree, which makes you doing so here doubly confusing.
So, taking a conservative estimate of all ~20,000,000 GamePass subscribers paying $10 a month, that's $2,400,000,000 in revenue. Of course money had to go to third party deals and overhead, but the idea that you can't fund a $100,000,000 dollar game, or several for that matter, with those numbers and not make money is just not true.
Again, this is not true. Games are actually unique in that many, if not most, have long-term revenue generating potential with things like DLC and Microtransactions; hell, GamePass might increase the money you get from those since the pool of potential players is so large. I predict Microsoft, EA, and Take-Two Interactive are all watching very close to how much money The Show makes on GamePass. Further, if you think everyone is doing the 1$ trick, then you need to step out of your bubble. Even if a substantial amount of people are doing that, it's not literally 1$; loading 3 years of Gold and converting still leaves you paying $5 dollars a month when you do the math. Getting people subscribed is the hardest part; keeping them is comparatively easy.
I agree, studio output has been pretty bad for a while now; it's the reason I didn't buy an Xbox One, haven't bought a Series X, and am not even subscribed to GamePass. As for the power thing, I don't keep up with most of the Comparison threads, but from what I understand they've been either even or with an advantage to Xbox for a bit now, so I'm not sure what you're implying here.
The "Microsoft is going 3rd Party!" should be a meme at this point for how many times it's parroted. Whether you like it or not, Microsoft has a very clear vision and goal with Xbox, one they seem to be satisfied with given how much investment it's received over the last 4 years; they're not gonna just bow out and go 3rd Party no matter how much you want them to. Hell if it turns out well I might actually buy an Xbox at some point, but the idea that the GamePass model is a complete money sink and a "desperation move," especially when its in line with where Microsoft as a whole has been pivoting for a while now, is insanity.