One of the biggest arguments in favour of Xbox I hear is competition. Xbox competes with PlayStation. Even if it doesn't win, it existing at all means Sony has someone keeping them in check, helping ensure we don't get a $599 console again. We don't want Xbox to go away completely, because that would be bad for the industry, right?
I don't think so. I think people who claim Sony won't have competition if Xbox dies are, well, stupid. Allow me to explain.
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PC GAMING: First of all, PC gaming. This is probably the most direct competition Sony has, because with Steam at least, it is the same userbase that Sony targets for primary spending on gaming dollars. In the past, PC gaming has been its own silo, separate from consoles – the releases on PC had little overlap with the releases on consoles, how the games were played was very different, different genres were popular on PC versus consoles, and so, a customer for one was not necessarily a customer for the other. That has been gradually changing in the last 15 years, until this point, in 2025, PCs get all the games consoles get, with the potential for each PC version to be the best version of the game available. PCs offer full controller compatibility now (better than even consoles in most cases), and the current big hits on PC, while including bespoke PC things like Schedule 1 or REPO, also include Monster Hunter or Oblivion or Expedition 33. First party games from Microsoft and Sony themselves are published on PC. Formerly console exclusive franchises, such as Persona, Yakuza, Final Fantasy, Monster Hunter, and Dragon Quest, are now all on PC. Formerly console specific genres such as VNs and JRPGs are huge on PC (arguably more successful on PC than on console). Even markets that formerly preferred consoles and had almost no PC gaming culture, such as Japan, have started to adopt gaming on Steam en masse. Even assuming no other competition for PlayStation existed, PC gaming would be enough of a competitor that Sony wouldn't be able to arbitrarily exploit their customers with no pushback or consequence
NINTENDO: The Nintendo audience has also traditionally been siloed off from the audience that PlayStation and Xbox consoles have shared. Part of this is because Nintendo has actually gone out of its way to differentiate its platforms, eschewing traditional industry expectations and building consoles that specifically stand out from the others with unique gimmicks and features that leads to very different libraries and experiences on there. However, that differentiation has also started to break down in the last 8 years. The dawn of the Switch era has seen an increasing cross pollination of games between Nintendo, and the other console ecosystems. Third party titles that traditionally skipped Nintendo have released and found great success on Nintendo systems, from The Elder Scrolls and DOOM to Persona and Portal, from Grand Theft Auto and Assassin's Creed to The Witcher and Civilization, from Diablo and Nier to Yakuza and Red Dead Redemption. That third party support is looking to get even stronger on the Switch 2. While obviously, Nintendo hardware is weaker, meaning third party games usually run worse on Nintendo systems, the broader market obviously doesn't care – games like The Witcher 3, FIFA, Persona 5, Mortal Kombat 11, and Hogwarts Legacy all sold extraordinarily well on Switch, for example, in spite of the Switch versions being noticeably worse, to the point of feeling a whole generation behind compared to the other consoles. The Switch 2 does not have this issue. Thanks to diminishing returns on visuals and tech used for game development, aswell as the Switch 2 hardware having some modern features and design, such as DLSS, third party titles hitting the Switch 2 at the very least seem to be in the same generation of visuals as other systems. Obviously Cyberpunk 2077 or FF7 Remake won't look as good on Switch as they do on PS5 - but compared to something like The Witcher 3 or Kingdom Come Deliverance or Mortal Kombat 1, where the Nintendo version literally looked a whole generation behind, the differences here are a lot more subtle and minor – meaning that the Switch 2 potentially becomes a viable alternative to PlayStation for a lot more people. Especially in markets such as Japan, Sony absolutely cannot ignore the Switch 2, and must make decisions around it. While the enthusiast audience will probably choose PC over PlayStation if PlayStation went too far with anti consumer policies, for a large number of the broader mainstream market, the Switch 2 may be a viable alternative, enough that it creates at least some check on Sony
INDUSTRY FORCES: Here's the other thing – Sony is not an island. Sony is answerable to a lot of other entities, and that places limits on what they can do. For example, do you seriously think that Sony would be able to get away with a $1,000 console (as an example) just because Xbox does not exist? Do you think third parties will support a console that has an entry asking price of a thousand bucks, knowing that their investment is unlikely to be substantiated by a console that literally cannot sell to the bulk of the existing market? Sony will not want to do anything that disrupts the balance of factors responsible for its current success in the market. PlayStation is the de facto console platform for AAA third party games, and it is that because third parties have, over 30 years, gotten the confidence that there will always be a base of ~100 million paying customers for them to sell their games to. If Sony were to try to make a machine that disrupts the possibility of third parties reaching that audience, then said third parties will drag their feet on supporting PlayStation, which is not a scenario Sony wants or can even afford for the continued health of their products. PlayStation does not sell on the basis of first party games like Nintendo – if third parties are alienated by Sony because they build a console that alienates its market, then that PlayStation console ends up in trouble. So there are larger industry forces that are placing checks and constraints on Sony too.
NON-GAMING COMPETITION: The biggest thing is that the competition for Sony isn't just traditional games. The competition for any gaming company is, well, everything else. The currency that these companies are fighting for is the customer's time, and customers have more viable things to do with their time than ever before. If they don't want to pay $1,000 for a PS6 and The Last of Us Part 3, they not only have PC and Nintendo platforms to consider, they not only have mobile games to consider (mobile games are obviously never going to be good enough for people like us, but for the bulk of the global population, they very obviously are), they have a thousand new shows being put out every week on Netflix and other services, they have the billions of hours of content about their hobbies they can find on YouTube, they have an endless stream of inane UCG from doomscrolling TikTok and Instagram, and this is also not counting other forms of entertainment like reading, movies, working out, hobbies... people have far more things to do with their time now than ever before, and they are not beholden to buying a PlayStation if it becomes hostile towards customers. if Sony tries to release something that's too expensive or anti consumer, people can just... decide to not play games, and spend their time on a dozen other cheaper hobbies or entertainment options instead. This is not something I have made up, executives from major gaming companies (including Microsoft, Nintendo, and yes Sony) have stated this exact sentiment multiple times in the past. Sony has some wiggle room to push prices – but ultimately, the existence of all these other forces putting pressure on the size of the available audience also puts constraints and checks on Sony.
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The big argument people have traditionally used is that all these other products and options aren't true competition because they are too different.
Except... that is really stupid because differentiation is the whole point of competition. Competition is not supposed to be two identical products with minor differences selling to the same audience, competition is supposed to be multiple products selling to the same general audience, but with unique differentiations that compel those audiences to buy those other products too. Xbox isn't Sony's "only competition" because they essentially made a green X branded "PlayStation at home" product, they are the least successful of Sony's competitors because they did that. Successful competition is competition that puts pressure on Sony by offering viable alternative products with compelling enough unique selling points, whether it is PC gaming with its openness, flexibility, and immense hardware power, or Nintendo with portability, affordability, and a catalog of high selling exclusives. No one argues Netflix is not competing with HBO because the two are offering very different takes on the same concept, no one argues Pizza Hut is not competing with McDonalds because one serves pizza and one serves burgers, no one argues that movie theatres aren't competing with streaming because one needs you to go to a theatre and the other has you staying at home. Those are all competing products! Which one the customers go for comes down to which appeals most to them based on the unique differentiating factors and how they line up with what the customer is looking for – but they are all competing.
PlayStation, Nintendo, PC, mobile, and non gaming media is all directly competing. Just because they are all different enough to each be compelling on its own does not mean they are not competing, it means they are competing successfully.
Xbox can die, but the gaming market will continue to do well. There won't be stagnation and customer abuse happening just because a product that failed to compete, is no longer competing.
I don't think so. I think people who claim Sony won't have competition if Xbox dies are, well, stupid. Allow me to explain.
--
PC GAMING: First of all, PC gaming. This is probably the most direct competition Sony has, because with Steam at least, it is the same userbase that Sony targets for primary spending on gaming dollars. In the past, PC gaming has been its own silo, separate from consoles – the releases on PC had little overlap with the releases on consoles, how the games were played was very different, different genres were popular on PC versus consoles, and so, a customer for one was not necessarily a customer for the other. That has been gradually changing in the last 15 years, until this point, in 2025, PCs get all the games consoles get, with the potential for each PC version to be the best version of the game available. PCs offer full controller compatibility now (better than even consoles in most cases), and the current big hits on PC, while including bespoke PC things like Schedule 1 or REPO, also include Monster Hunter or Oblivion or Expedition 33. First party games from Microsoft and Sony themselves are published on PC. Formerly console exclusive franchises, such as Persona, Yakuza, Final Fantasy, Monster Hunter, and Dragon Quest, are now all on PC. Formerly console specific genres such as VNs and JRPGs are huge on PC (arguably more successful on PC than on console). Even markets that formerly preferred consoles and had almost no PC gaming culture, such as Japan, have started to adopt gaming on Steam en masse. Even assuming no other competition for PlayStation existed, PC gaming would be enough of a competitor that Sony wouldn't be able to arbitrarily exploit their customers with no pushback or consequence
NINTENDO: The Nintendo audience has also traditionally been siloed off from the audience that PlayStation and Xbox consoles have shared. Part of this is because Nintendo has actually gone out of its way to differentiate its platforms, eschewing traditional industry expectations and building consoles that specifically stand out from the others with unique gimmicks and features that leads to very different libraries and experiences on there. However, that differentiation has also started to break down in the last 8 years. The dawn of the Switch era has seen an increasing cross pollination of games between Nintendo, and the other console ecosystems. Third party titles that traditionally skipped Nintendo have released and found great success on Nintendo systems, from The Elder Scrolls and DOOM to Persona and Portal, from Grand Theft Auto and Assassin's Creed to The Witcher and Civilization, from Diablo and Nier to Yakuza and Red Dead Redemption. That third party support is looking to get even stronger on the Switch 2. While obviously, Nintendo hardware is weaker, meaning third party games usually run worse on Nintendo systems, the broader market obviously doesn't care – games like The Witcher 3, FIFA, Persona 5, Mortal Kombat 11, and Hogwarts Legacy all sold extraordinarily well on Switch, for example, in spite of the Switch versions being noticeably worse, to the point of feeling a whole generation behind compared to the other consoles. The Switch 2 does not have this issue. Thanks to diminishing returns on visuals and tech used for game development, aswell as the Switch 2 hardware having some modern features and design, such as DLSS, third party titles hitting the Switch 2 at the very least seem to be in the same generation of visuals as other systems. Obviously Cyberpunk 2077 or FF7 Remake won't look as good on Switch as they do on PS5 - but compared to something like The Witcher 3 or Kingdom Come Deliverance or Mortal Kombat 1, where the Nintendo version literally looked a whole generation behind, the differences here are a lot more subtle and minor – meaning that the Switch 2 potentially becomes a viable alternative to PlayStation for a lot more people. Especially in markets such as Japan, Sony absolutely cannot ignore the Switch 2, and must make decisions around it. While the enthusiast audience will probably choose PC over PlayStation if PlayStation went too far with anti consumer policies, for a large number of the broader mainstream market, the Switch 2 may be a viable alternative, enough that it creates at least some check on Sony
INDUSTRY FORCES: Here's the other thing – Sony is not an island. Sony is answerable to a lot of other entities, and that places limits on what they can do. For example, do you seriously think that Sony would be able to get away with a $1,000 console (as an example) just because Xbox does not exist? Do you think third parties will support a console that has an entry asking price of a thousand bucks, knowing that their investment is unlikely to be substantiated by a console that literally cannot sell to the bulk of the existing market? Sony will not want to do anything that disrupts the balance of factors responsible for its current success in the market. PlayStation is the de facto console platform for AAA third party games, and it is that because third parties have, over 30 years, gotten the confidence that there will always be a base of ~100 million paying customers for them to sell their games to. If Sony were to try to make a machine that disrupts the possibility of third parties reaching that audience, then said third parties will drag their feet on supporting PlayStation, which is not a scenario Sony wants or can even afford for the continued health of their products. PlayStation does not sell on the basis of first party games like Nintendo – if third parties are alienated by Sony because they build a console that alienates its market, then that PlayStation console ends up in trouble. So there are larger industry forces that are placing checks and constraints on Sony too.
NON-GAMING COMPETITION: The biggest thing is that the competition for Sony isn't just traditional games. The competition for any gaming company is, well, everything else. The currency that these companies are fighting for is the customer's time, and customers have more viable things to do with their time than ever before. If they don't want to pay $1,000 for a PS6 and The Last of Us Part 3, they not only have PC and Nintendo platforms to consider, they not only have mobile games to consider (mobile games are obviously never going to be good enough for people like us, but for the bulk of the global population, they very obviously are), they have a thousand new shows being put out every week on Netflix and other services, they have the billions of hours of content about their hobbies they can find on YouTube, they have an endless stream of inane UCG from doomscrolling TikTok and Instagram, and this is also not counting other forms of entertainment like reading, movies, working out, hobbies... people have far more things to do with their time now than ever before, and they are not beholden to buying a PlayStation if it becomes hostile towards customers. if Sony tries to release something that's too expensive or anti consumer, people can just... decide to not play games, and spend their time on a dozen other cheaper hobbies or entertainment options instead. This is not something I have made up, executives from major gaming companies (including Microsoft, Nintendo, and yes Sony) have stated this exact sentiment multiple times in the past. Sony has some wiggle room to push prices – but ultimately, the existence of all these other forces putting pressure on the size of the available audience also puts constraints and checks on Sony.
--
The big argument people have traditionally used is that all these other products and options aren't true competition because they are too different.
Except... that is really stupid because differentiation is the whole point of competition. Competition is not supposed to be two identical products with minor differences selling to the same audience, competition is supposed to be multiple products selling to the same general audience, but with unique differentiations that compel those audiences to buy those other products too. Xbox isn't Sony's "only competition" because they essentially made a green X branded "PlayStation at home" product, they are the least successful of Sony's competitors because they did that. Successful competition is competition that puts pressure on Sony by offering viable alternative products with compelling enough unique selling points, whether it is PC gaming with its openness, flexibility, and immense hardware power, or Nintendo with portability, affordability, and a catalog of high selling exclusives. No one argues Netflix is not competing with HBO because the two are offering very different takes on the same concept, no one argues Pizza Hut is not competing with McDonalds because one serves pizza and one serves burgers, no one argues that movie theatres aren't competing with streaming because one needs you to go to a theatre and the other has you staying at home. Those are all competing products! Which one the customers go for comes down to which appeals most to them based on the unique differentiating factors and how they line up with what the customer is looking for – but they are all competing.
PlayStation, Nintendo, PC, mobile, and non gaming media is all directly competing. Just because they are all different enough to each be compelling on its own does not mean they are not competing, it means they are competing successfully.
Xbox can die, but the gaming market will continue to do well. There won't be stagnation and customer abuse happening just because a product that failed to compete, is no longer competing.
.
Especially considering how easy it may be to get Microsoft on board as a publisher. They're trying to get their stuff on every platform possible afterall.
![L*][*N*K](/data/avatars/m/842/842515.jpg?1744192062){kind=avatar}
