I think you’re giving them too much credit. These companies are run by people who fundamentally don’t understand their market or customers, and they over reach out of greed and over estimating their worth. We are in a time of companies needing to prove profitability, so here we are.
In the context of gaming, Sony and Microsoft couldn’t be more different. I can get over Sony’s terrible store backend or refund policies. I know how they work, how to avoid pitfalls, etc. at the end of the day, they make the better games that I like to play and have shown over the course of thirty years to support gaming first.
I get called a Sony fanboy for calling out Microsoft for being terrible for gaming. I haven’t owned a Nintendo device since N64, but I have nothing bad to say about them. They make great games.
They of course stop updating old devices. The 5 year old iPhone XR is getting updated to iOS 17 this month, and they are still putting out security updates to the 9 year old iPhone 5S.
They started limiting the CPU clock on older devices that had poor batteries in situations where it would try to draw more power than the battery could maintain. Identical devices with good batteries were not slowed down. Literally the opposite of planned obsolescence, but they failed to communicate what was happening which very likely lead people to buy new phones instead of getting their batteries replaced. At that time I had an iPhone for personal use and a Galaxy S5 for work. The S5 started doing the exact thing that Apple prevented when my battery started wearing out and random apps would crash the phone. However, unlike Apple where I could pay them $99 to fix it, Samsung and Verizon essentially told me to go pound sand and wouldn’t even sell us an official battery. We resorted to buying some sketchy thing off Amazon that never seemed to be as good. Kinda funny how Apple got all the hate, yet Samsung was the one that let me down.
Apple doesn’t force you to upgrade. They have the longest support length in mobile. What they are fantastic at is convincing you that you need to upgrade.
Microsoft has no taste. They don’t know what makes a good studio or a good game. It’s clear by now with over twenty years in the industry. They have a ridiculous bank account and can’t even buy good taste. Every company they’ve bought, so far, hasn’t been improved by the purchase. It remains to be seen what happens with Bethesda or Activision, but so far all I’m seeing is forced exclusively because they can’t make anything themselves.
GamePass is their attempt to buy the market through guaranteed subscriptions where individual game quality doesn’t matter. Good not great is their bread and butter.