@DishSoap As I stated, it was to cover more than the rights to connect, and you wouldn't have responded with that being your only reason as to why you feel as you do, had you taken the time to read my post, instead of skim reading past everything once you saw I was disagreeing with you. The service is more than cost of connection. Take connection out of the equation, and you still have other expenditures I outlined. It's more than the cost of servers, as they pay employees to handle multiple tasks outside of maintenance and upkeep.
Had they not had made some incentive for the reasoning behind paying for a service, such as connection to online games, minus free to play titles, as there were none when Xbox Live first came out, Xbox live, and their console platform as a whole would not be where it is now, because there would be zero profit. In fact they'd be lucky if they broke even on the cost of such a service. Like their Twitch competitor Mixer, the service would be seen as too costly, and a waste of time, and thusly service would be dropped. It's the same reason they got greedy and tried to force everyone to switch to game pass, which is where the company went wrong.
They saw a profit, weren't happy with what they had, and wanted more. Beyond access to online gaming, most don't care about the bonus rented games, and other bells and whistles. Game pass just doesn't appeal to most players who want to own what their money is used on.
There's a clear difference however, between an honest profit, and greed, and anyone that's had to work in their life, and deals with payroll, understands that If you aren't making profits, the business model begins to net negative returns, and the money to make up the loss either comes out of someone's paycheck, results in mass lay offs, or the company cuts it's losses and moves on entirely to something more profitable.