In 2017, the first gaming console I ever bought was the PS4 Pro. There was an exclusive game I wanted to play, and back then exclusives never got released on other platforms later, so if you didn’t have a PlayStation, you absolutely couldn’t play them – that’s why I bought it. At the time, I’d never owned a gaming console before, so I was curious about it too. Even though the PS4 Pro was lacking in performance, I really enjoyed the exclusive games, and gaming consoles had their own convenient aspects, so I had fun with it for 3 years.
In 2021, I bought the PS5 even though there weren’t any exclusive games I particularly wanted to play, mainly because it had backward compatibility and such. Unlike the PS4 Pro, it didn’t make that jet engine takeoff sound (!), and the DualSense was pretty fascinating at first, so I enjoyed using it. However, starting with the PS5, many exclusives began getting released on other platforms a year later, and while the DualSense was cool, there weren’t really many games that made good use of it over time, so I eventually lost interest.
In 2022, I happened to see Elden Ring available for pre-order and pre-ordered it to play on PS5. At the time, I heard that Souls games are more fun online because you can read messages from other players, so when PSN was 50% off, I bought a year’s subscription for about $15 and had fun with it. Surprisingly, watching other people do silly things was quite entertaining ㅋㅋㅋ So even though I’d never really liked any games on PSN and knew that since it’s a rental system I wouldn’t be able to play them once my PSN subscription expired, I just accepted it. Nintendo’s online service also costs about $15, so it’s pretty much the same price anyway – I just considered it as paying for the online features.
When the DualSense Edge came out, I was like “Oh what’s this? Should I buy it?” and looked into it, but when I saw it was about $225, I lost interest. When the Portal came out, I thought it was a handheld console like the Vita and was going to buy it, but when I found out it was just a remote play device for about $225, I lost interest again.
Last year when I heard the PS5 Pro was coming out, I was like “I should upgrade!!” but… about $750…?
↑ Whaaaat~~~~~?
I guess the Pro line isn’t for regular gamers anymore, but a premium device for people who can afford to game with an RTX 4090 and still have money left over~??? So I lost interest.
And a few months later, when I had some free time, I thought “Maybe I should buy the Elden Ring DLC and torture myself~?” So when I went to buy the DLC and looked into getting PSN, the basic (Essential) plan was about $65~? Whaaaaaaat~?
I thought I had clicked on the Deluxe plan by mistake.
The price doubled, so maybe Essential now includes the game catalog or something~? No~? Nothing~? It’s still the same~?
I guess they’re targeting wealthy gamers with the DualSense Edge, Portal, and Pro~??? So I just stopped caring about them,
↑ Nope.
Wait, they doubled the online subscription fee? Seriously?
Nintendo has Pokémon, which brings in steady revenue every year to cover online costs – a guaranteed income source that will never come to other platforms unless Nintendo goes bankrupt. But among PlayStation exclusives, is there some game I don’t know about that consistently generates enough revenue to cover online costs~?
Nintendo even has a family plan, so if you get people together it costs about $3.75 per year, but PlayStation wants about $65~? For a platform that has PC as an alternative~? Are they trying to drive away their existing customers too~?
So now you only want rich customers as your customers! Got it! I’ll go back to Steam then!
Steam is even having a summer sale right now, so the price of Elden Ring base game + DLC is barely any different from a year of PSN…