The way I see it: PC has a high upfront cost with minimal maintenance/upgrade cost to continue using it with newer releases for years.
Consoles have a cheaper upfront cost but no maintenance/upgrade. Once it’s obsolete (as determined by the industry, not the owner) then you are forced to buy a new console for new releases.
For me, in practice, I know for a fact that I have spent less on my PC components and games than I would if I wanted the same experience on a console.
I’ve been a PC gamer for 3 decades. Most budget conscious PC gamers I know upgrade individual components as needed. Done this way, you can easily get more for your money than having to buy a new console every cycle.
They probably realized it’s not profitable because 90% of a user’s visits are home, work, store… wash rinse repeat day in and day out. They can probably get more meaningful data from the person through their other various tracking methods.
Good. I hope more forced live service games flop so execs will get it in their heads it’s ok not to make a live service game and still make money from it.
Just a reminder to everyone that it’s fun to hope it’s aliens, but Occam’s Razor suggests it isn’t and the real answer is likely something naturally occurring.
That’s the point though, right? It’s all publicity. They don’t want to give it to someone who may actually use it. Give it to the billionaire who will never use it so.
Enshitification. Private equity buys up everything, squeezes it for all its worth, forces it to lose all its customers, and then sells off all remaining physical assets (land, buildings).
Look behind the downfall of most big country wide names and you’ll see a private equity firm running this same playbook right around the time they started losing quality.
They think they own most of the guns because they’ve built a whole culture around it. What they don’t realize is there are plenty of non-Rs who own guns too as a hobby or protection, but their whole identity isn’t “I’m a gun owner” so they don’t go around hoopin’ and hollarin’ that they own guns.