Things This Gen You Didn't Expect

[Lrdfancypants]

Darwinianevolution said:

I didn't expect Nintendo to push mobile as much as they're doing it.
I didn't expect the WiiU to undersell at this scale. My original prediction was 30-40m, and it didn't even reach half of that.
I didn't expect Pokemon Sun/Moon to be 3DS games, I thought Nintendo would push them to the NX to sell the system.
I didn't expect Fire Emblem Fates to be split into three games.
I didn't expect gamers would ignore the fees for the PS4's online multiplayer as much as they have.
I didn't expect consoles would go the incremental updates route like mobile phones did.
I didn't expect people would care whether a console has blue-ray reader or not.
I didn't expect Mighty Nº9 to be such a colossal dissapointment.

This one is interesting for me because I owned all 3 last gen and multiples of them: I bought 2 wiis and 5 Xbox 360s - I owned one PS3 given to me that I did not buy myself (first ever PlayStation and it was late in the generation)

One thing I liked about the PS3 was free online although I played online a lot more via my 360. 

The online price of ps4 vs PS3 was a complete nonfactor for me and MS mightily helped Sony in this regard.  I had in my mind to get two Xbox ones at launch and received a nasty gram from MS that I'd be paying a lot more for online coming up as they were ditching my family plan in favor of making me pay $60 * 4 per year!!  This email sat very wrong with me and actually got me to look into Sony more and their online service.  I already paid $50 a year for plus vs $100 for Live family plan. I found out my kid could be my sub on Plus for free and I could share my digital library via two ps4's between us for the same $50 a year.  MS, if I cut it down to just two logins, would be $120 and I was told I could not share my library except on one Xbox one (I realize people are doing it now but back then remember MS was going through a weird PR stage where every talking head said different things and at times seemed hostile to their customers - calling in to ask I was told they'd ban me if I tried it) so the decision was made easy.  

I could choose to pay half what I was currently paying on the new generation by swapping to Sony, maintain the same features and add digital sharing as an extra for that same price (a big factor for me this generation as couch coop is becoming less frequent likely because of wanting extra live/plus/console sales) or pay more to MS while getting less features I was interested in.

Long winded story but it's not always so black and white.