Note: I do not think this will happen. I am not even sure it is a good idea but I think it's worth discussing.
Instead of licensing by the camera ($50 per channel, $300 per channel, etc.), license VMSes by MPs recorded (e.g., $50 per MP, $500 for 10MP, $2000 for 50MP, etc.).
In the early days, all cameras were basically the same resolution (or quite close) so a camera was a camera was a camera (when it came to resolution).
Today, you have this bizarre scenario where a VGA cube camera costs the same to integrate with a VMS as a 4K camera or a 40MP multi-imager camera, even though clearly the later two cover far more area, have more use than the former.
Because of this discrepancy, we have seen Milestone's tactic of only charging 1 license per IP address. Surely this helps lower the cost for people using analog cameras but it has this weird side effect of covering even multiple 1080p cameras on a single IP address.
A 4K camera does not replace 25 VGA cameras, but it regularly covers the area of a least a few of those. So pricing by the camera is inherently deflationary for VMS manufacturers.
One benefit of charging by MP is that people are used to spending more for higher MP cameras, so this fits camera expectations.
If someone buys a '100MP license' than they can allocate those MPs how they see fit, whether it is more SD cameras or fewer 4K cameras, etc.
This also matches better with sizing for VMS servers anyway as they are typically measured by max throughput.
One downside would be that this scheme would be less attractive to people who use fewer very MP cameras.
Overall, I doubt any will change but with the development of higher resolution and multi-imager cameras, I thought this was worth considering.