Maybe.My friend owned PS2 then Xbox 360 then PS4 and now went with PS5. Xbox One’s done huge damage + unlike Xbox 360, Xbox launched the same year as Playstation so people went with Playstaion.
Yeah, the Xbox One completely killed the brand here. It’s a mountain to climb for the Series. They do have a very good position though, with Game Pass and hardware which they should lean into.
They should acquire more and more. But Sony made a bet on licensed cross media IP, so it remains to be seen if MS will be able to compete with their decisions. I stick to my opinion that Playstation will outsell Xbox, Game Pass might have more subscribers though (it would be awkward if they won’t).
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Sony was before PlayStation a household electronics name that had an extended global distribution network, they had local presence in most of the world well before PlayStation. With the PS1, they leveraged a lot of the advantages that they had. They were able to produce efficiently and afford selling at $300. They were able to sell to most of the world through their previous and established presence. They also were one of the most rich companies in the 90s, the were able to sway a lot of publishers and devs to develop for the PS1. The UEFA champions league sponsorship. The local presence and localization. The fact that the PS1 was the cornerstone for modern gaming… All of that has contributed the most to PlayStation’s ‘default console’ status, magnitudes more than ‘Exclusives’. Exclusives came from that huge success, they weren’t the cause of it.
How will those parts of the world respond to having the weaker console? I think Cyberpunk has proven that there is definitely a difference. Is it only an American thing to care about console power and which system runs games better?
It is not a thing anywhere. There is not a single generation where the winner was decided by console power.
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Well, Sony was essentially what MS is today in comparison to other platform holders (Nintendo is eternal though). And yeah, their distribution network was huge simply because they sold various players, devices and so on across the world. Sony was also one of the household names for electronics. That’s also true.
Aside it not making a huge difference (see Wii), the power difference between Playstation and Xbox is not that big. And arguably, MS pushing Xbox Series S making Xbox weaker than Playstation hardware wise.
Yes, it’s always a combination of multiple factors.
With Digital Foundry and similar comparison channels, the technical power of consoles started affecting things a little bit. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.
It’s important to remember Nintendo has had multiple fuckups and comebacks. It’s a new generation, anything can happen. For instance Xbox could buy Bethesda and change the balance of power in an instant 
But Nintendo never declined in the general consumer market that much. They had their “portable” consoles as a backup unlike Xbox who made self-Thanos move.
I’d argue power is important for Xbox, they needed the One X-Series X just to get away from the “weaker console” label. That is also why the Series S is possible, they offer both.
I honestly don’t know how Nintendo does it but they do not play by the same rules as everyone else. They are their own thing.
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Nintendo was never able to challenge PlayStation in the main home console market. Xbox was more successful in that than Nintendo, actually. Nintendo always had to dramatically differentiate to get to the huge success they reached.
Nintendo is very much a challenge to Sony. They’ve basically kicked PlayStation out of Japan.
Because Japan cares less about home consoles now.
they are Disney, thats why
Which is why an XBox Switch would make so much sense, automatically including 3 years of Game Pass Ultimate.
People keep talking about the Xbox One and the unique situation that enabled the PS4 to dominate. BUT I don’t see it like that at all. The Xbox One was of course a disastrous launch and a period where Xbox went completely missing.
But the end result of Xbox One’s sold is way way way above where you’d have predicted Xbox to be back pre launch of the OG Xbox.
The ANOMALY and weird result was the 360. And the circumstances that led to that were extreme. Sony being a year late and super expensive with a machine that wasn’t very easy to work with for developers. Sony being not great at PR and marketing then. And the 360 essentially launching into the ‘games are mainstream and cool’ period with a huge emphasis on online and multiplayer just as those things were taking off and the PS3 not having the same backend or service quality. All of that is very particular to the time and meant Xbox 360 was dominant for a long while. But as the generation went on you see the PS behemoth kicking in and their brand flexing its muscle.
I’d argue that the numbers last gen are still a success for Xbox considering it was a bad launch and also considering their fist console in 2001 was far far below that in terms of numbers. You couldn’t have forseen the next generation but it was an outlier. And the next one whilst mistake laden was always likely to see huge shift back to PS as that had been happening since 2009/10 consistently as the PS brand recovered.
Consoles are always described as fails or successes usually based on year 1 or 2 and the data behind them but the reality is you need to take the brand strength over a much larger continuum than a console release to see what’s going on and to understand it.