Here’s the thing though…

I’ve bought now three single-player (with online features) games on console not realizing the servers had already been shut down for whatever reason within a year or two of launch. I can’t play them, and I really wanted to.

Sure they might not have made money off me this time around, but if they put out a game in the future and I’d been able to play these, I’d be more likely to try those and give them my money. Instead, because I wasted money on these year-old games that were already trashed, I just won’t touch anything from those studios ever again, since they clearly don’t believe in their games at all. It makes me look real long and hard into how “online” they are… if I need an internet connection to solo play? Immediately not interested, which is becoming much more limiting as that gets more common.

Meanwhile, if I ever bother setting up my ps2 with an Ethernet cable, I can play with other people who have the same setup with 20+ year old games (like champions of norrath, last I played that “online” was about 10 years ago, but it seems to spin up an on-demand server for whomever is available).