It's not that hard when you market the fact that the service gives you access to a few dozen games a year, now it's also started to have full retail games, that saves people money. It's not like you're only getting access to multiplayer for multiplats and nothing else.

Agreed.

PS+ is a great value, but I believed there would be people annoyed by the fact that it would become mandatory for online play, seeing it as a kind of backslash.   Reactions were way less intense than I imagined.

Everyone was distracted with Microsofts DRM policy and online requirements.  You have to remember anyone owning a Microsoft console, was already use to this kind of thing.  Sony's version was still more consumer friendly at the time.  Not required for APPS, not required for F2P games (DConline), and included a decent amount of free games in the price.

Gamers had a bigger evil to fight at the time.  Sony really lucked out with the timing.