I was listening to a podcast and they mentioned the idea that they don’t think Sony wants to be in the console business, but rather selling games and services.
I personally don’t agree with that statement but got me thinking, what if Sony went the way of Sega and stopped making consoles and just made games? In this alternate time line, how would you imagine the gaming world to be? What would Nintendo, Xbox, Valve, Tencent, and others look like?
Thoughts?
Sony will continue making consoles.
I can’t imagine a world where Xbox is still making consoles but somehow Sony isn’t. Lol
Regarding the gaming world if that happened, it would suck having one less competitor in the console space, or effectively, no competitor in the home console space.
If Sony or MS would stop making consoles, then that’s it, the only survivor product would suck for real because of no competition and real monopoly this time. I think there’ll always be a home console for at least the next two decades, until people born before 2000 will play games consistently more or less.
After Sony bought Bungie and Bungie dictated the terms of the deal to be multiplat; Jim Ryan attempted to spin the deal by doing his best Phil Spencer impression. Jim Ryan is no Phil Spencer so the Bungie announcement got delivered terribly, all on a day that MLB the Show was announced for Gamepass and Switch but that’s unrelated, but still helped in muddying the message. The Sony fans are confused but they don’t need to be. Sony isn’t going multiplat. Sony is desperate for first person shooter / online multiplayer cred and an independent Bungie was essentially the best Sony could do. This isn’t PlayStation going multiplat, it’s just Jim Ryan being bad at messaging and the PlayStation fans/ games media unable to follow the plot.
Well since Jim Ryan LITERALLY said Sony was going multiplat I’ll be waiting for all the game media articles about Sony exiting the console business. Seems those articles are not coming out but I’m sure we will see more speculation about Xbox leaving gaming.
This gen it is so funny that Sony is going all in 9n the things gaming media and fanboys railed on Xbox for doing.
Hmmm, I think I was wrong. You may be onto something there. That makes a lot of sense.
Media will never attack Sony the way they do Microsoft, and it’s rather unfortunate how one is villianized and the other gets praised for the exact same things. But that’s just how it is. The truth is Playstation has been out for like 7 years over Xbox, and that’s a long time to build emotional attachment to a brand over another.
Microsoft was dogpiled so visciously about RotTR timed exclusivity that they had to publically announce the exclusivity terms and change their entire philosophy about timed exclusives and first party efforts. Thats, uh, pretty big when you think about it in retrospect. The internet exploded on them and the vitriol was crazy to see in real time. Meanwhile, Sony obsfucates timed exclusivity as best as they can, extends timed exclusivity behind the scenes, started the two year timed exclusivity method, literally pays money to keep games off of Game Pass via contract clauses (most recently RE8), and removes trailers/videos that originally showed logos of Steam and/or Xbox logos to obsfucate further. Nobody cares. (I shamelessly stole part of this paragraph from another forum because all these points are spot on).
Microsoft got flak for years about being honest with their crossplatform approach (1-2 years). The media and gamers alike talked about how they’re going to hold gaming back, and Sony gleefully took advantage with talking about how they believe in generations and various other PR wins, letting Microsoft get dogpiled. Come to find out, most of Sonys next gen output, including their 3 biggest this year in 2022, are crossgen, and Microsoft seem to be the ones ditching last gen first. Sony were the one who secretly had not only a crossplatform pipeline but a bigger one, at that. Nobody cares.
Cloud gaming, GaaS, MAUs, etc. have been things Microsoft have been mocked about for over a long, long time now. Media have even associated their dedication to PC gaming as a sign they’re exiting the console business (although the new sign they use nowadays is Game Pass). Sony now announces they’re all in on GaaS and wants to move outside their console garden to be “multiplatform” and all I see is nonstop articles praising this approach, saying it’s the future of gaming and suddenly GaaS is the obvious play. Now I agree with Sony’s approach (they desperately needed GaaS) but at the same time I’m baffled at the vast change in narrative.
It’s also hilarious that Destiny happens to be an online-only game; you can’t even play the game without an internet connection. Yet, that was practically a sin if you go back and ask anyone about the Xbox One launch.
There’s actually loads more comparisons but it’s pointless to list them all, lol. I’m sure everyone already gets the picture. I love owning all systems and will continue to play games on whatever console has games I enjoy (I literally got the plat for R&C Rift Apart last night) but let’s be real and call it like it is. It’s just how it is and Microsoft has always faced an uphill battle. I think that will change with this generation, though (who am I kidding, lol).
Sony will stop producing Playstation hardware before Microsoft does Xbox hardware. Thus will be completely a multi-platform publisher.
My thought on this is because of 2 simple things:
The argument against xCloud and Xbox Gamepass destroying the console has never made sense to me. Microsoft will be a multi-platform publisher plus a dedicated platform holder. Sony doesn’t have a choice in the future.