That, and it was slightly more justifiable when these companies were first setting up and operating networks for the services and matchmaking. Economies of scale should have nullified that by now, though.

The other big one I don’t see people mentioning, but that I remember clearly, was that if you wanted to use Netflix on 360, you had to pay for Live. I think that, above anything else in my friend group, was the move that normalized paying for online services on a console.

At first, we grumbled but did it because we knew that running the services had a cost. Then it got normalized. “Eh, it’s the price of one game a year, and I get to play whatever online and get three ‘free’ games a month, so it’s a good deal.”

Now, it’s not a good deal anymore, at least for me. Hit the “Cancel” button on my sub not 5 minutes ago.

I grew up on consoles, spent my teens on PC, and my adult life I’ve always kept both around, because I love games, regardless of where they are, but yeah. Most of my multiplayer was already on PC, this just solidifies my PS5 as a media/single player game appliance.