I have two answers, the first is a bit qualified (in that I don’t think it needs to die completely, but should definitely be put out to pasture for most games): Being able to fast travel anywhere (or almost anywhere) on a map is (almost always) bad. Not all fast travel per se; being able to pay for transport to, say, major cities/settlements on a map or something makes sense. Maybe reserve the current fast travel system for post-game stuff; but it shouldn’t be the norm. When you think of games where you probably didn’t fast travel much, it’s probably because something about the game made going from point A-to-point B fun (GTA games have a fun driving model, emergent chaos, and you can make your own fun on the way to a far-off destination by driving off road or finding crazy jumps; Breath of the Wild had sparse fast-travel points but exploring most the world is fun because there’s shrines to find, Korok seeds, or little puzzles throughout the world and you have a lot of freedom in how you plan your approach since one of the core mechanics is climbing, you’re encouraged to try obtuse routes to find secrets). In most games fast travel exists to cover up a serious design flaw: these are big worlds and the core mechanics don’t necessarily suit a world of that size.
Single player games having in-game currency that can be bought with real currency to skip some of the tedium definitely needs to die. I’m not sure how common this is, it’s definitely been a thing with Ubisoft titles, and it’s scummy. If your game’s balance for your single-player game is meant to drive users to pay money to level up because levelling happens so slowly or whatever, that’s just a dirtbag move and is unacceptable. I can at least understand why it happens in some MMO games (if you’re making a new character and you’ve played the game for awhile, I can get why you’d want to pay a few bucks to fast track that experience, even if I’m still not quite comfortable with that personally; it’s at least a bit more in keeping with the traditional business model of these games).
There was rumours of MS wanting to get Game Pass on Switch ages ago, when Minecraft had some minor Xbox Live functionality on Switch IIRC.
Maybe being open about that is a change of strategy, but it’s seemed obvious that MS wants to redefine their role by using Game Pass to become more platform agnostic.
Consoles are loss leaders, if MS could expand their role in the market while cutting down reliance on selling expensive hardware (expensive hardware with no foothold in Japan, a barrier to attracting some big name developers and publishers; and also struggles in Europe, where PlayStation has pretty consistently outsold Xbox), it’d be a clear boon for MS.