I guess it can be different for different people. Maybe I just never reached that “endgame point” but my progress was always marked by custom dialog and new quests in Odyssey, even if that sometimes meant a side quest rather than main quest.
The term ‘grind’ can be either a positive or negative depending on how much someone likes the core game loop. For something like Monster Hunter, it’s used in an appreciative way.
I guess it enables quick game demos? If a mildly interesting game is 80 GB, or the devs want to let people try it before they buy it but don’t want to code a demo, there’s a few options there.
Still, you’re right, not a big use case. Xbox has an advantage due to controller simplicity. I’m pretty sure you can play Game Pass games using a DualShock, even on a web browser.
I like that it’s another genre fitting for the “Silent badass treated as a lethal legend by other characters”, similar to Doom’s Doomguy. It almost makes sense - there was such a gap in skill between the common and the best pilots in wars, it’s somewhat practical to have “stories of caution about a plane with a certain decal”.
I feel like it’s a lot like the weapon breaking in Breath of the Wild - one of those systems that imposes heavy limits on players to enforce their creativity and flexibility in their approach.
I know a lot of people approach every game in a completionist, meticulous way where they do every quest, never use any consumable items, etc; and it often ruins the fun. It’s also why Ubisoft had the somewhat crazy idea in Far Cry 5 of actually forcing you to do story missions after game progress, trying to use designer mechanics to push some variety into people’s game sessions.
In Pikmin’s case, and I think Dead Rising / Persona too, the time limit is meant to get you to prioritize path planning so you get as much as you can done in a certain span. The core gameplay of Pikmin just isn’t all that interactive when you have all the time in the world for it - it’s built around the benefits of delegation and synchronization.