You mean a thing of the present. See the other front-page story about Diablo not working if you're offline for too long.

Paying to own is already a thing of the past for music and movie content. How is this different?

I’m not saying it’s different, it’s more like the nail in the coffin. Movies, music, apps, games, treadmills, coffee, printers. Anything that can somehow have internet connectivity becomes a subscription.

...which is why nobody in their right mind would buy anything "smart" that can't be modified to be dumb.

Thankfully we can still completely avoid subscription for music legally.

I think we can already see what the future market will look like. Gamepass exists right now as a subscription service at $US10 per month and cheaper in many regions. And games to own cost anywhere between 2 months to 1 year of subscription. It does not make economic sense to stop pay-to-own, given almost all owners will keep the subscription in addition or will want to pay-to-own additional games in the future. The reason subscription services like Gamepass are taking off is it makes so much economic sense to many consumers. It even makes sense for infrequent gamers, as they no longer need to purchase dedicated hardware with the streaming services. If paying to own stops being a thing, I think it will be because the market is so small it isn't worth running the store fronts any more.

Fortunately, all the good video games have already been made.