Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
I share a lot of John's sentiments but it's hard to argue against Sony's success which is exactly what it seems this video is trying to do, intentional or not. The blockbuster strategy isn't exactly new for them either.
That's the thing and the strategy that Sony had with the PS5 is essentially the same as they had with the PS4. So for John to say that it is nothing special is pretty laughable.
Even if all you did as a company was not make serious mistakes, that's something special. None of this is automatic and everything has to be earned. Whether it be games, peripherals, expanded access to markets e.t.c. To say it isn't special is pretty amateur of him.
I read this great article about how Sony 1P games are localized in so many different languages including voice acting. Horizon Forbidden West has 10 different spoken languages and 24 subtitled languages. Starfield has 5 spoken languages and 9 subtitled languages. Ignoring details like that and saying they aren't doing anything special while lamenting the lack of niche Japanese games shows how out of touch he is.
In three years Sony has put out Gran Turismo, MLB The Show (annually), Returnal, Last of Us Remake, Demon's Souls remake, Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarok, Spider-Man Miles Morales, Spider-Man 2, and ports/directs cuts for Uncharted 4, Death Stranding, and Ghost of Tsushima. They've hit just about every major active franchise they make.
They put out a VR follow-up, a pro controller, an accessibility controller, new headsets, and a remote play controller...
All while trying to make a push for more live service-oriented games. Which I'm not a fan of, but it makes business sense.
They've also for really the first time in their existence really leaned into transmedia.
As long as Xbox is the name of the company and of the consoles that Microsoft makes, I hope that nobody can really forget how important their hardware is in gaming. But you can get back from a bad console. Can they do it? We will have to see.
It is and we talked about it a lot since 2022. Microsoft just finalised a 70 billion dollar acquisition. The Series S/X is failing, but not as fast/hard as the Wii U did. As long as they don't nuke their brand in the meantime, we will have a next gen console from them, and time for them to hopefully fix their studios, old and new, to make us games worth playing. This is not a defense of Xbox position, just facts. I honestly can't imagine their position when the PS5 Pro and Switch 2 will arrive, and they will have to continue with a duo of console that will be at best out of position, at worse completely inadequate for the market from the end of 2024 and beyond. Each month will be the occasion to talk about it, because they have a better vision and better data about the market than we do, so we will see moves from Xbox to react if it continue to get worse in the next few months. As for them crashing down, I am curious how Gamepass can save them or precipitate the fall, hypothetically speaking. Can having 20 millions consumers make Xbox big enough to survive until they find a new strategy(whatever that would be?) or will people just abandon the service if enough bad months follow in a row?
Great post. We're talking about it here, but the media isn't sufficiently talking about it. There is a huge question as to the sustainability of Microsoft's approach and the average gamer doesn't even understand the conversation because the media won't discuss it.
I think a lot of people are going to be blindsided by the future of Xbox, though everything was laid out well in advance.
I think the difference between the XBS and the Wii U though is Nintendo was able to quickly pivot off the Wii U. It was really only out for 4 years and because it didn't have direct competition, it was really only competing with itself.