Imagine a few years ago the brass at Sony lay out out the plan to invest billions in GAAS games.

The Strategy would leverage PC gamers to expand the user base and increase the chance for these GAAS games to be successful. Oh and obviously using PSN accounts to expand the userbase and have controll.

Imagine no one. NO ONE. in such a meeting would mention something like: "ehhhh, are we aware that PSN only covers a limited number of regions and PC gamers are pretty much everywhere. ehmmm perhaps we should do something about that...."

You'd need to expect people think about this before committing to a billions dollar plan.

When PS3 still had free online, a lot of games added online passes for the PS3 versions.
https://www.ea.com/news/online-pass-for-ea-sports-simulation-games

https://www.reddit.com/r/PS3/comments/2oouzv/online_pass_list_wiki/

It came with a newly purchased game but you would have to buy it separately when buying the game second-hand or get it from a friend. That was the excuse in the physical days, server hosting not included for re-sales.

I don't know if it was on 360 as well but the industry found other ways to get rid of 2nd hand sales and lending games. PC already had that in place with Steam, physical died out a lot earlier on PC. Gone are the days one copy of Half-Life lets 4 PCs play together online.

But now, what are we paying for on console. Moderation? (Which is crap) Hosting patches? (Which Steam does as well)

Payed online is not going anywhere though now the focus is on GAAS. That 30% cut from games sales only becomes less with GAAS. Hence pay to keep playing :/ Same idea with Gamepass.

Online for consoles is one of the reasons I switched to PC.

$500 for the hardware
$480 for online over the generation
$200 to upgrade the hdd

The above buys one hell of a gpu that will easily outclass the ps6. Add in games on PC being way cheaper, I'm saving at least $200 a year on games.

Console gaming was cheap and convenient compared to PC. Doesn't feel like the case anymore. Plus I love deciding what fps I want. And access to old games isn't limited and behind a pay wall. I'm legit curious what the ps6 looks like, not sure high end consoles have the appeal they once did.

PC gaming isn't perfect either you have to be willing to play a lot of bad ports, since most big games are optimised like crap for pc.

Also many people prefer to use the couch for gaming rather than sitting behind a desk, which they are already sitting behind for 8 hours a day. I tried a Shield, but it has too many hiccups to rely on.

For a decent pc you will spend 100 dollars on a case, 200 dollars on that same M2 SSD, 500 dollars for motherboard, ram and a CPU, another 400 for a GPU and around 100 for cooling. Most people spend a bit more on cooling and the case for the looks and it running more quietly.

I would argue that you get at least a few games with PS plus that ate worth playing and safe you a bit of money. Especially these days when there is always a PS5 sale going on and I can trade in physical games.

Nothing is perfect and flaws exist anywhere.  But PC has come a long way.  I haven't had any issues with bad ports. 

As for sitting behind a desk....  not here.  HDMI out to my TV, 4k at 120 fps all day long.  To be fair my computer was $3500 with a 4090.  But again a ps5, Series x, hdd upgrades and paying for online was going to put me well over 2k for consoles.  

Free games on paper are nice but steam and humble sales are amazing.  I can get games for $5 to $10.  

Sony should make it playable without subscription then to make it fair :)

This is simplu bullshit and i cant believe console gamers in this day and age is still spitting this shit when they are well used to badly optimized games themselves cough forsaken etc etc... A few bad ports doesnt mean all are bad ports, in fact most games play much better on pc then on consoles..

NO pc needs to be stuck behind a desk too it has a hdmi port like your console.. and can even use your consoles controllers all of them...