> Why pay for the full price of an X-Box that sits idle most of the time?
Because it's available at a moment's notice. You don't have to actively schedule around its availability, or otherwise worry about it. It gives you consistent play experience, freedom to use it in nonstandard ways, and if anything goes wrong, it's likely you can do something about it now.
In general, ownership removes worry and gives you more options. Those have utility that more than offsets reduced utilization.
As for example of what I mean by worry, let's take video streaming. Between Netflix's failure rate and unexpected catalog removal, my ISP's failure rate, OS (both Linux and Windows) and browser (both Firefox and Chrome) being what they are, and anything else that happens between my machine and the CDN hosting the video I want to watch, there's a non-trivial chance it may be not available at the time I want to watch it, or it will be non-watchable (e.g. because it's pausing every few seconds to buffer, because of some failure somewhere). I experience some sort of a failure like this roughly once every week or so. That doesn't seem like much, but it generates some anxiety - a worry that at the exact moment I wanted to stream, it won't work, e.g. ruining an at-home movie date with my wife, or my personal "sit down with my favorite supper and put on a show" unwinding ritual.
Contrast that with the same video, acquired on the high seas in form of a local file. This. Just. Works. If the same or similar video file worked last month, it will work today, 100% of the time. Even if the Internet goes down, even if Netflix goes belly up, even if my ISP gets hit by a fire, even if a war starts somewhere and there's a billion people rapidly F5-ing news videos - my video file Will. Just. Work. I can set dinner and sit down and double-click and, not for a second, worry about the hidden weather of markets and networks ruining my evening.
That's just one small part of what makes ownership good despite seeming economical drawbacks (well, drawbacks to whom? it really seems to depend on one's accounting methods...).
Because it's available at a moment's notice. You don't have to actively schedule around its availability, or otherwise worry about it. It gives you consistent play experience, freedom to use it in nonstandard ways, and if anything goes wrong, it's likely you can do something about it now.
In general, ownership removes worry and gives you more options. Those have utility that more than offsets reduced utilization.
As for example of what I mean by worry, let's take video streaming. Between Netflix's failure rate and unexpected catalog removal, my ISP's failure rate, OS (both Linux and Windows) and browser (both Firefox and Chrome) being what they are, and anything else that happens between my machine and the CDN hosting the video I want to watch, there's a non-trivial chance it may be not available at the time I want to watch it, or it will be non-watchable (e.g. because it's pausing every few seconds to buffer, because of some failure somewhere). I experience some sort of a failure like this roughly once every week or so. That doesn't seem like much, but it generates some anxiety - a worry that at the exact moment I wanted to stream, it won't work, e.g. ruining an at-home movie date with my wife, or my personal "sit down with my favorite supper and put on a show" unwinding ritual.
Contrast that with the same video, acquired on the high seas in form of a local file. This. Just. Works. If the same or similar video file worked last month, it will work today, 100% of the time. Even if the Internet goes down, even if Netflix goes belly up, even if my ISP gets hit by a fire, even if a war starts somewhere and there's a billion people rapidly F5-ing news videos - my video file Will. Just. Work. I can set dinner and sit down and double-click and, not for a second, worry about the hidden weather of markets and networks ruining my evening.
That's just one small part of what makes ownership good despite seeming economical drawbacks (well, drawbacks to whom? it really seems to depend on one's accounting methods...).