NGL, I am starting to lean that way. I feel like a lot of companies are looking for shortcuts to "solve" rising costs instead of the root causes of them, and some of the moves from certain platform holders the past few years are reflective of that.
Absolutely.
But I know there are always going to be platforms for me to play on regardless, so there'll never not be a place to game. I do feel like certain companies are doing things at a lesser level than they could if they had more of a genuine hunger & passion to stake claims in the market, though.
I think this issue is multifactorial. For example, Square Enix is a company that has lost sight of the essence of its biggest IP and has also suffered from mismanagement and misplaced priorities in R&D (Luminous Engine), which go hand in hand with a lack of talent, vision, and leadership.
We can see Bethesda's complacency, ego, and tech debt undermining their most recent games. Starfield's performance with its own fanbase is embarrassing and should be a wake-up call. The same can be said of BioWare, Bungie, 343i.
In the context of exclusivity (without reading the thread), if someone is trying to equate Xbox's moves to PlayStation's, they're clowns. And if someone is saying something like "more people get to play games," that's such an NPC answer.
We know that Xbox utterly failed with the strategy of putting games on PC to save their brand and business. They are a zero to the left in this conversation; a failure in every sense of the word.
So, we only have Nintendo and PlayStation to talk about, and I think in both cases, what you're saying applies: They are not operating at their peak.
It feels like this hunger and passion have been overtaken by an aura of fear, stagnation/complacency, and incompetence.
In the case of Nintendo, it almost feels like they're trying to cash in on this generation by doing the least possible while increasing prices until they figure out what to do next.
PlayStation has been a disaster in terms of its internal pipeline and overall vision around GaaS.
Right now, funnily enough, PlayStation's potential problems won't even come from putting games on Xbox or PC day one, but rather from their games falling into irrelevance; the Ubisoft or MCU effect. Sure, their games can still sell around 10–15 million copies, but they should be selling 20–30 million if they're putting them everywhere. And without the "exclusivity subsidy," the buzz around them can be lukewarm or falling even faster. I think games like Forbidden West, Spider-Man 2, Ragnarok, and of course The Last of Us 2 are already there, even with this "subsidy."
Marathon, Yotei, and Intergalactic have failed to impress in the "Sony way" like they used to, so this is a real issue that Sony better be aware of. Even porting games to other platforms won't provide much of a boost in sales either.
