Thing is if Sony is going to be so disrespectful of users past purchases by barely supporting BC and closing old hardware stores why should end users consider past purchases on the sony side?
Xbox is obviously doing much more to respect a gamers past purchases. If you bought Sony consoles and had tons of Sony games from PS1-PS3 the latest Sony offerings in hardware are not going to help you very much play that huge back catalog. Hell Series S has better Sony BC due to emulators you can load on it.
Honestly I love my PS5 but I donât want to spend $70 on their first party titles? Something I would never have had a problem with before Gamepass. I will of course keep the system for Spider-Man and God of Wars but Gamepass, BC and tech wizardry to get these games running in 4K, auto hdr and 60fps boosts âŚkind of makes Xbox the no brainer for gaming enthusiast of all types.
Yup, I agree with you in principle, but there are a few mitigating factors like sunk cost fallacy and even just plain old lack of information. I donât know about you guys but I still havenât received that e-mail from Sony about closing the stores, and I had a bunch of digital purchases on PS3/P/Vita (and 4 but thatâs probably not relevant) Iâm pretty tuned in to game news and whatnot so I passed it along to all of my friends who also had no idea.
Even putting that aside, itâs really easy to not know what youâre missing if youâre used to something thatâs, frankly, worse. When I learned that Xbox offers free cloud saves, I actually had a bit of a hard time confirming that because itâs not super talked about because itâs expected here. When I learned that BC is not only robust but sometimes enhanced, it fairly blew my mind. When the PS4 came out, I shrugged my shoulders and figured âguess previous gen games arenât supported at all.â I had entirely written off the Xbox One at that point despite loving my 360, so when I vaguely heard that the One would support BC, it was too little too late.
To be clear, I love being able to bounce between different generations of games on one device, itâs amazing. Itâs just not a massive selling point for some people and thatâs fine. Different people have different priorities. Thereâs no device thatâs a perfect fit for every type of person so thereâll always be concessions. Itâs the job of the platform holder to excel in so many avenues that they canât be ignored, and I think that Xbox is in a really great position here. The quality of life and value that their ecosystem provides is second-to-none, and that was enough for me.
For my case, I examined the pros and cons of both sides and determined that I was willing to give up some of the things I wanted, like being part of the âPS experienceâ with my friends. That sounds kind of weird, so let me provide an example: Iâm a big JRPG nut, as are some of my friends. It feels crappy when they talk about how much theyâre enjoying FF7R, since I donât have access to it (yet). All I can really contribute is âI hear it was goodâ and such. That said, Iâm heartened by stuff like Yakuza and Octopath being on Game Pass, which is even better than them being available on another platform. The rumors about Persona and whatnot are a nice balm too
I think that the Xbox team had a herculean task ahead of them in salvaging the brand, and that they absolutely rose to the occasion. I canât compliment them enough, from leadership to marketing to engineers to design. It was thanks to good word of mouth online that I decided to look into the Xbox One at all in 2019 after having written it off as a joke for the entire generation, and I have to say that itâs really because of my passion for games and my personality that I put in the work to compare the two. Iâm too close to see it now so I canât tell if the marketing is reaching people better. Iâm seeing a lot of positive press lately, though!
Edit: forgot to address your last point! The Retroarch aspect is both great and hilarious. I donât know that it would necessarily move the needle for too many people though since itâs kind of a pain to set up and the grey legality aspect can be a turn-off. I know I got a kick out of running my personal rips of my personal copies of Nintendo and Sony games that I physically bought on my Series X.
MS is addressing every single pain point from a QoL perspective and just making it easy / simple for folks to upgrade or jump into their ecosystem.
They are offering varying price points to enter the ecosystem⌠I think long term wise the XSS is real trojan horse as the price point will eventually become an instant buy / no brainer⌠esp for those that may have a PS5 or Switch as their main system. With a better experience on the series, this is a way in which MS will lure away some gamers away.
Then xCloud and xbox apps on TVs will hit and boom⌠the strategy was laid out years ago and things are now materializing. Itâs pretty damn exciting.
One call out: This takes YEARS of planning, investments and strategy and it all stems from Philâs leadership and now is starting to pay off. Paul Tassi is one such great use case but I am sure he is not alone.
Sony I am sure is looking at all this and rethinking their strategy but itâs going to take years to revamp their infrastructure, architecture and just how they approach delivering some of these things.
I donât think they need to counter everything. As long as they keep making great decisions, it is gonna be ok ( though I wouldnât say no to a super-hero licensed game ).
