Any sports fan will tell you the ups and downs of following their team through thick and thin. Last minute winners, heartbreaking losses and skillful legends are etched in their memories. Right now my team is pretty good, and for a long time it was very, very bad. Before that, we were tragically good, earning nothing despite our greatness. I understand the high of winning and the punch of missing it all. I know what it’s like to think you just need one more player, one lucky hit, one big rebound, and it’s all set. You can’t leave your team, so all you can do is hope the chips drop. But your games console is not a sports team. Stop treating it as such.
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For years people with too few friends and limited access to soap have engaged in console wars, which is basically choosing Xbox or PlayStation and pretending everything is great when everything sucks on the other. In the last gen, this war was a walk in the park for Sony, whose “For Gamers” messaging was backed by stellar exclusives that pushed the support envelope, while Xbox failed to use the success of the 360 as a launch pad, instead struggling to pitch the Xbox One as an all-in-one entertainment system when Kinect, its main gimmick, failed horribly – then there was the not-so-minor fact that the Xbox didn’t had no games.
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So far in this generation, the dust has yet to settle on the battle. PlayStation mostly continues in the same vein – through God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West and the upcoming duo of Final Fantasy 16 and Spider-Man 2, PlayStation 5 still has the big exclusives. Xbox no longer plays copycat. It’s changed its approach, pushing Game Pass flexibility and access, while buying up studios that will deepen its roster. The long development cycles (and protracted Activision acquisition) mean that the only fruit of this approach so far is the bad apple of Redfall. With Starfield, Perfect Dark, and the aforementioned might of Activision Blizzard on the way, the tide might be turning.
Members of the Xbox team celebrated these acquisitions as proof that things revolve around the green machine, while Sony will be left in the mud. It doesn’t matter to them that acquisitions generally lead to less creativity as small studios are merged with big money makers, or that monopolization tends to introduce anti-consumer practices while limiting employment opportunities for developers. All that means is that their team wins. They are blind to the fact that they are losing. We are all.
Now comes the cry that I’m only saying this because it’s Xbox, because the press is paid for by Sony, or because I’m clearly an enemy in the console wars, an intruding spy here to cause carnage. But it’s bad when Sony does that too. Sony has been doing it for longer, and while it’s admittedly on a smaller scale than Activision Blizzard, it’s not slowing down – Bungie was recently gobbled up by Sony. At Sony, we also see what happens under a monopoly. The company dominates, so it no longer needs to be For The Players. Instead, it charges $70 per game, takes at least a year to add its games to its subscription service (much worse than Game Pass), and tells us it was our idea not to have PS games on PC before three years after launch. .
But they win. So the fans love them. And the fans want more wins, so they’re ready for things to get worse. Sony has been rumbling about more acquisitions, and fans are once again begging for the noose on gaming to tighten, for there to be fewer games, for fewer risks to be taken, and for developers to all be part of it. of a happy family (where losing one studio job probably means 50 others now have their doors closed permanently). It’s like hoping your sports team signs a star player, but instead of having a child prodigy, you have fewer opportunities for unique ideas to develop in a medium you’re supposed to love. Imagine if Real Madrid decided not to buy Jude Bellingham, but rather to buy Espanyol, Celta Vigo and Real Sociedad and say that all the points these teams earned are now points for Real Madrid. If you’re American, swap those teams out for the Texas Tummyticklers and the Michigan Mudsquelchers.
Fans have been touting the juicy peaches of Ubisoft, Capcom, Square Enix and Atlus being ripe for the picking, but I don’t know why they would encourage a big company to buy another big company to become a really big company. The little guy never wins in these situations, and no matter how many PS t-shirts you own and how much time you spend online each day insulting Xbots, you’re still the little guy. You always will be. You don’t have to be part of the PlayStation team.
by PlayStation
Most people can’t afford both consoles, so it’s only natural to want the one you own to be the best. To that extent, it’s okay to be a “fan” of Xbox or PlayStation. But when you go from hoping that the latest exclusive is good, or even from the schadenfreudic desire that the competitor’s games suck, and you start looking for million dollar acquisitions that often damage the fabric of the medium so that your team can win, you’ve come this far. You don’t have to be a PlayStation fan. You can just be someone with a PlayStation.
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