Yep, when I called spirits an "I Win Button" upthread, what Hobbes just said is the kind of stuff I'm talking about.
With regards to ItNW, why does it matter that you need Magic to neutralize a Spirit? It doesn't much, if you look at it from the perspective that there's never been a team of runners that doesn't have at least one Magician, and if your table is the first one ever to be all-mundanes then the GM can just not use spirits on them, right?
Wrong.
The power imbalance goes both ways. When you need magic to neutralize a Spirit, then the PC who can Summon them automatically wins vs any NPC or group of NPCs unless they TOO have mages among them. In order to keep Spirits from being "I Win Buttons" for the Player, then the NPCs have to have heavy magic backup every time they're supposed to be a challenge. And if every challenging fight has big bad Spirits to keep Angel Summoner from trivializing the encounter for everyone, now everyone who's NOT Angel Summoner, on both sides, are peripherally relevant. Both NPC AND PC. While it's ok for mook NPCs to play second fiddle to the Spirits and the Summoners who control them, it's not OK for players to all be 2nd fiddle to the Summoner just because they're not also playing Summoners.