fortnite is a better example than GTA 5 even, its f2p and its estimated it made $3 billion in PROFIT in 2018 purely on skins and cosmetics.
EA and Activision desperately want some of that money but they keep going about it ass backwards. You need a few whales who spend 80% of the money, but you ALSO need the millions of plebs so the whales feel like they can "show off" their skins and shit to the masses. You charge $10 or $60 for a game and it doesn't matter, most plebs aren't gonna come and so most whales aren't gonna bother either.
The future is simple, its f2p for GAAS games and you have battle passes and skins for $ and you update often to keep millions in your sandbox. Or you go after SP gamers like Japan is really, really good at now as well as indies, CDPR, Ubisoft, etc.
Activision and EA though want to try to do BOTH every single game and they fuck up miserably every time now because GAAS gamers don't want a box fee AND microtransactions and they need tons and tons of normal people playing and constant patches, while SP gamers don't want microtransactions in their face at all. Two very different audiences, which EA doesn't really seem to get at all.
