I am very sad that ES6 and Starfield will never run on a Sony console. Just like when some Gimlet podcasts I liked went Spotify exclusive -- this kind of thing is a net negative for the world.

Yes exactly - it should meet the current standard for anti-trust action that it hurts consumers. It's quite sad that this is not enforced at all anymore apparently.

personally, I'm glad they won't be wasting time catering to two lowest-common-denominator systems. as someone who's only ever owned a PC, I've always lamented my high end (or, after a few years, low-grade (but still better than console)) hardware going to waste on games which haven't figured out how to make proper use of it. we've had affordable SSDs for nearly a fricken whole decade and essentially zero attempts to optimize their use until now, now that consoles have them. and there still aren't any directstorage games out. it's ridiculous the frontiers we've lost, the games we've gimped, due to low end hardware restraints. someday i hope they ditch the idea of the "xbox" as well, and consoles are lost to the sands of time. but for now, at least they're only wasting their time optimizing for one piece of trash, and at least that trash uses the same OS.

Your complaint boils down to the equivalent of "why aren't safe speed limits on roads optimized around hypercars". Probably because the average car is close to a Toyota Camry. The number of people with high end PCs is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of console owners and publishers want to make money.

it's not just about high end PCs, though. like i said, something as basic as an SSD has been affordable for nearly a decade, for not high-end builds. but the fact the xbox one and ps4 exist, and didn't come with one by default, means nobody cared. it's a tragedy. whatever hardware level they decide that consoles get for a given generation holds back the development of gaming tech for their entire lifespan.

And you weren't aware of the potential risks of a closed ecosystem before?

It's not like you bought into an open ecosystem, but now they closed it off.

I didn't buy into either ecosystem. I'm just trying to show that it's not positive for everyone.

Never said it's positive for everyone but "consumers always lose" is equally false.

Commercial games aren't made to make everyone happy.

No game release is a "positive for everyone" and never will be.

I can equally argue that my neighbor baking bread is not positive for me, because I don't get to eat it. And I like bread...

"consumers always lose" and "it's not positive for everyone" are different statements with non-overlapping meanings.