"These price increases have multiple intertwining causes, some direct and some less so: inflation, pandemic-era supply crunches, the unpredictable trade policies of the Trump administration, and a gradual shift among console makers away from selling hardware at a loss or breaking even in the hopes that game sales will subsidize the hardware. And you never want to rule out good old shareholder-prioritizing corporate greed.
But one major factor, both in the price increases and in the reduction in drastic “slim”-style redesigns, is technical: the death of Moore’s Law and a noticeable slowdown in the rate at which processors and graphics chips can improve."
Along with paying for multiplayer I get access to a large catalog of games as well as additional games every month. Yes they’re inaccessible if I stop paying, but that’s not really a big deal. Even all that aside, I pretty much play single player games anyway.
Also, when a game comes out I know it’ll work. No driver bugs, no messing with settings, no checking minimum and recommended specs, it just works. And it works the same for everyone on the platform. I don’t have any desire to spend a bunch of time tweaking settings to get things just right, only to have the game crash for some esoteric reason or another.