minecraft also a large number of things going for it.
- It was(is) a single game
- It was already multiplatform, and only the most suicidal company would take a game that was multiplatform and make it exclusive. Not including the backlash as players lost access to a game they paid for, but there would also be untold number of refunds that would need to be done, lawsuits (most likely) to handle, etc.
- It already had a very large (and most importantly) young userbase that they could monetize on dozens of platforms.
- If you followed the proceedings of everything that is going on you’ll have read that they actually wanted to make the new minecraft legends xbox exclusive. While the emails didn’t say what ended up making them change their mind, I would imagine being in a certain legal fight might have played a large role in it.
- Exceptions happen, but I imagine that exception would be the appropriate word rather than norm. But I’d love to be proven wrong.
I think you are vastly minimizing the “plug and play” aspect of consoles and that the common person has a machine that can run games with a “minimal setup”. While PC gaming has plenty of benefits: I think you’re downplaying how much time, money, and energy you have to waste to PC game.
Steps to play on a console: 1) Turn on the system, 2a) Maybe if you’re unlucky and a new patch comes out the same day you want to resume playing you have to patch the game, 2b) Play game (possibly even resume playing where you left off so you’re literally instantly back into the game). Time-to-play: Maybe 20 seconds? (granted a little longer on last-gen, but also this gen you can be back in a game literally within 5 seconds).
Steps to play on a pc: 1) Turn on pc, 2) Turn on (or launch) steam/egs/gog/etc, 3) hope game was updated, 4) hope drivers are updated, 5a) launch game, 5b) maybe sign into another 3rd party launcher, 6) load fully into the game, 7) play game. Time-to-play: 1-5 minutes depending on if the computer is fully off or just in sleep. Possibly much, much longer.
But WAIT, maybe the game isn’t running great so you have to alt+tab out and make sure you didn’t leave something running in the background, or your 100+ tabs in chrome/ff/etc are hogging all the ram and needs to be closed; maybe new drivers came out that you need to download/install to get the game running right, maybe the new drivers made the game worse and you have to revert them. Maybe the controller you wanted to play the game on disconnected or otherwise malfunctioned and now you have to restart the game the get it to pick up the controller. Maybe the DRM on the game has hitched up and you’re locked out of the game. Maybe you get a windows update that closes the game for you so it can helpfully install whatever new updates are available for you. etc etc.