Why are all the good gaming consoles making people pay to play online?

I haven't paid for over two years for xbox live gold. And i have another two years on top of my account. I use bing rewards and accumulate points to get xbox live gold for free.

along with other social media people doing drawings for giveaways, i haven't paid for gold in a long time.

you still pay for internet. Xbox live gold gives you other features besides online connection. That's why you pay for it.

How old are you? I only ask because I'm 28 and this is the reason why when I play games I only play single player story focus games. I do play BF1 from time to time tho but I'm a PC gamer so this doesn't affect me. Still this is the reason why my only console is a ps2

Companies are in business to make money. As long as there are people dumb enough to pay so much to play a silly game then they're going to make a profit from them.

I find it amusing how you worded your question. You're making it sound as if they just barely started charging for the service…

Xbox Live came out nearly 17 years ago and it has never been free. MS has always charged you for the online game play. Sony began charging for online game play in 2013 with PS Plus on the PS4. So none of this is really "new".

The servers that the games run on for multiplayer aren't cheap to run and maintain. Plus, with your subscription to the online service, you get other 'benefits' that may or may not be of interest to you like "free" games (for as long as you have the subscription active), and other things.

If you don't want to deal with the online subscription BS, consider moving to PC gaming. It is more expensive up front, you don't have to pay for online gameplay.

Well, it was Microsoft that does it the first time, while the others were just following where the money is, since they know that people are willing to play for it.

Microsoft is currently the most strict of the 3 companies, since Sony and Nintento still allowed you to play Free-to-Play games without any requirements. And sometimes Sony and Microsoft also doing "Free Weekend Play", where certain games can be played without XBL/PS+ requirements.

To help pay for the servers… People realize servers cost money right. Look back to when online was free for the PlayStation 3, the quality was absolute garbage. It's literally $60 for a year of Xbox Live, even cheaper with the current Xbox Ultimate Game Pass. If $60 a year, well receiving multiple free games a month is too much than you should probably focus on why that's too much for you. Not to mention paying $60 for a game has been the same since 2005.

Game consoles have starting charging subscription fees for online services in order to help cover the maintenance costs of the servers for the games that utilize the service. These were generally charged by 3rd parties until the XBox for Microsoft (with XBox Live), PS3 for XBox (with Playstation Plus) & Switch for Nintendo (with Nintendo Switch Online), when the console makers started charging for their online services.

As mentioned, the subscription fees are charged to help cover the costs of those servers & related services. They have now supplemented the subscription fees with free games to better justify the costs.

Everything in this age is about who can make the most money unfortunately its a competitive world out there

"good gaming consoles"- that made me laugh. No such thing. Lol