Charging a small fee for access to services that aren't offered elsewhere, alongside discounts which with a single purchase can more than cover the cost of that subscription is not what I'd classify as bending over the consumer. Considering the money in the console industry, I hope you'd accept that a service like Steam and console platforms are very different services, despite both housing games. If Steam were what people purchasing consoles secretly really wanted, they would simply use Steam.
If you re-read what I actually wrote, using this generation as an example, there was/is the choice between paying for a service which has features no other console competitor has in addition to game discounts, or simply not having access to those features at all. If you want to argue with both this idea making sense and things also having played out exactly that way in the marketplace, feel free, but your emotional investment aside, I think my point stands to both reason and what we've observed.
