Right, but again, you have choices in almost every piece of hardware.

Consoles lock you down a lot harder in this respect. You either but their hardware and possibly software, or you miss out on the whole thing.

And a lot of people, like a sibling of mine is just getting to the point of maturity where you figure out the brand you like is the bad guy and you don’t want to give them money anymore, but you sorely miss the product itself.

Given how hard they’re locked in, it’s really hard for them to jump to a new platform. Not quite as bad as switching from Android to or from iPhone, but not super far off.

Personally I jumped out completely before I got invested in a digital console store, so I didn’t have that problem. But the point is that they gotta completely start a new collection and paradigm.

Whereas if you one day have a huge problem with let’s say, Steam, you can just opt to never buy from them again without losing access to your library, no matter what hardware you’re running it on.

You can choose to never buy an Acer monitor, CoolerMaster PSU, or (insert other random examples) while still having a computer.

I mean it’s impossible to really find “good” companies, but you can at least pick your lines in the sand with a lot more granularity than just consoles.