There was a time where the fact that launch meant a high player count, big community energy, and lack of hyper-optimized strategies minmaxxing the fun out of a game was sufficient reason to get it at launch.
But given how often modern launches are bungled, even that is not always true
Even big singleplayer games can be fun. I liked being involved in the early days of BG3’s release, for example. But then again, no mans sky and cyberpunk sucked