The Circle of Xbox vs Gaming PC Life in my Brain

The cycle goes like this (the fourth, the fifth. The minor falls, the major lifts...):

• Check out new game (i.e. Arc Raiders) that I've been hearing a bunch of folks talk about.
• See that it's on sale on Steam or Xbox marketplace.
• Think about buying it for Xbox since that's the gaming platform I have, plus I've got some Xmas gift cards burning a hole in my digital wallet.
• Just as I'm about to click buy, I realize that because it's a paid game, I'd have to also pay monthly for Xbox Game Pass (formerly Xbox Live) to be able to play online, which is at minimum $13.99CAD+tax a month.
• Start building an updated PCPartPicker list for a gaming PC so that I won't have to pay monthly just to play a game casually with friends.
• Realize that's going to cost tens of millions of dollars now because of RAM prices thanks to everyone's need for AI slop on the internet.
• Go back to playing Fortnite. Which is free to "own", and free to play online with friends on Xbox or whatever gaming platform my friend's use.

The economics of Fortnite work because Epic Games, creator of Fortnite, has a deal with Microsoft where Epic pays the costs of playing on Xbox so players don't have to. And the sheer number of players who play Fortnite—because it's free—and then give money to Epic Games in exchange for skins in the game so their avatar looks like Bob from Bob's Burgers (hypothetically) makes it profitable enough for Epic Games to pay Microsoft for game matching services.

It still kind of breaks my brain a little that if you pay for a game, you also have to pay for match-making. But if you don't pay for a game, you don't have to pay for match-making.

Still, I love those racing stripes they're using in the Arc Raider branding. That's half the temptation for me.