Why exclusives matter.

[Gameguy]

There's so much in this thread that I can't really comment on all of it at once, maybe I'll go back later but for now I'll just comment on a few things.

Additionally, without exclusives there's no reason to get these new consoles.

Yes. Basically there's little reason to buy a new console over buying a new PC these days. A console is really more of an entertainment box for the living room than a dedicated video game machine, it's just something that's more convenient to handle games and watching streaming services in a living room than buying and setting up another computer for most average users.

If we don't get the consoles and only buy a PC, there's even less out there to choose from, so when PC or Nintendo is the only option, Nintendo has zero reason at all to be competitive, they have no reason to spend money outside of their own game development, but that's going to make them billions of dollars each release so that's obvious. But they're not going to put anything to support your Bravely Default's, Octopath Traveler, etc, so less development costs given to publishers, the less games we get all around.

I disagree with that first part. With PC gaming there's a near bottomless selection of options for games as it's an open platform with non-standard varied hardware options and various operating systems, a lack of competition really isn't a problem with PCs. If publishers won't pay to have a game made for a console, other publishers will pay to have games developed for computers, the same way PC publishing has worked for decades. If publishers still aren't interested, there's crowdfunding/e-begging that worked for games like Shenmue III. You can't self-publish a game on a home console the way you can with computers, but anyone can release a game themselves for computers. You don't even need a platform like Steam which has some content guidelines, you could release it yourself though it would probably be less profitable this way.

Does Steam do anything at this time to be competitive to Epic? Nope, because the fanbase refuse to use Epic even though it's just an app. Again, people refuse to even consider games they're interested in and in the case of Steam and Epic, it's an app. It's just a different UI that they have to run to play the game. They don't even have to pay to use Epic. Steam isn't competitive because they don't have to be, while Epic is out there trying to provide free games to get support and all that's doing is having people log onto Epic, download free games, and then attach them to their Steam library as a third party game. Which is why Epic stopped providing the free game a month as it wasn't actually getting anyone to buy anything from them.

I don't like having to keep signing up for multiple accounts online all the time. Just more things to remember passwords for and potentially be vulnerable to data breaches. I avoid signing up for rewards programs as well for this reason. Each grocery store chain by me has their own loyalty program, I'm not bothering to join any of them and am ignoring the items that are only on sale if you have an account and also load a special offer beforehand. Rather than jump through hoops for a sale price I'll just not purchase the item instead. The one loyalty program I use I signed up for ages ago and coincidentally associated with a grocery store recently when it never used to work this way, it's a decent bonus but I wouldn't consider signing up for it now if I didn't already have it.

It's like signing up to multiple various streaming services. No thanks. Even when people used to pay for cable television at home, did anyone think of signing up to multiple services at once? Like pay for cable and also pay for satellite as well? Most people would just pick one service and leave it at that. Really it was the same way with consoles back then, you just had one console per generation and only bought games for that one platform, maybe having a portable console as well if you were lucky. When PC games were sold physical at retail stores, you didn't need any account at all to play them.

Same thing is going to happen when Nintendo is the only console publisher. Nintendo's psychopath fanbase will still have their cult meetings three times a week where they murder small children to their satanic plumber god while acting as unpaid advertising mouthpieces during every other waking moment except for that short period of time they go to collect their food stamps and welfare check. Nintendo could take a big dump in a box and this fanbase would still offer its undying loyalty.

Honestly I don't like Nintendo's modern hardware all that much. I'm glad I don't have much interest in modern games, I'm basically done caring about modern releases. Even with games that do look good, I don't really care enough to actually bother buying or playing them. If I did consider to buy modern hardware of some type at retail, it would be a more modern computer rather than any console.