A reader predicts an extinction level event for the video games industry and blames both Sony and Microsoft for letting it happen.
Well, what a week it’s been, eh? We had the first tentative announcement of the Nintendo Switch 2 and then we had Xbox provide a free clown show for the entire world to see, that generously went on for days. I think at this point we take off the kid gloves and just admit that not only are Xbox laughably incompetent but that they’re an absolute parasitic blight upon gaming, that are now in real danger of destroying the entire console industry. That’s not hyperbole, that’s just plain fact.
I feel I can avoid any accusations of console bias by saying that PlayStation are almost as bad: slightly more competent but, by their inaction, just as guilty for dragging gaming into the dirt and abandoning everything they’ve been building on for the last 30 years, the second things became difficult. Although the real reason they’re less distractive is simply that they haven’t got the money to make as much of a mess of things as Xbox has.
When trying to work out what Xbox is trying to achieve, I’m reminded of the quote from Game of Thrones, where Varys talks about Littlefinger by saying, ‘He would see this country burn if he could be king of the ashes.’ In the Song of Xbox and PlayStation, Phil Spencer takes the role of Littlefinger. Except Phil Spencer, like the rest of his executive cronies, is an idiot.
I’ll say this, I do think Phil Spencer probably does like games. He likes money more, and as an exec would probably sell his own grandmother to climb another rung up the corporate ladder, but back when he first started as the big boss, he probably did think he could do better for Xbox and help gaming overall. The last decade of failure though shows that no, he can’t.
As GC already pointed out, the problem with Xbox is that they’re always looking for an excuse not to just buckle down and make games. They always think they’ve found a shortcut, that can let them catch up with PlayStation, whether it’s buying up companies Sony can’t afford or TV integration or backwards compatibility or streaming or Game Pass. Anything to avoid just putting your head down and making some great games.
PlayStation has the same tendencies, often by about the halfway point of a generation when they’ve secured their ‘win’, but I thought after the success of the PlayStation 4 they’d learn the secret to being a successful console manufacturer. It’s not a very complicated secret, it’s… make good games. Games so good people want to buy your console to play them.
I mean, it really isn’t any more than that. Just ask Nintendo. They’ve been in this business longer than either Sony or Microsoft and they’ve taken their knocks. And how do they engineer their comeback, despite having far less money to hand? They shut up and make some great games, and customers quickly return.
But Microsoft has never had the patience for that (and absolutely never stop talking) and now that they’ve wasted $75+ billion on buying up developers they’re out of time. Microsoft has the money for that sort of acquisition, but when you’re dealing with that much money they want it back with more on top. It’s like borrowing from your parents, they might forget a few small loans but when you start talking about real chunks of cash, they want that money back… with interest.
Except what is Xbox going to do? It’s still got no exclusives on the horizon that are going to make people buy their consoles (I’m going to take an educated guess that Hellblade 2 and Indiana Jones are not going to turn the tide) and the big companies it chose to buy don’t make games more than every five years, at most. What even is Blizzard working on now and how long is it going to be till The Elder Scrolls 6, let alone Fallout 5?
They own Activision now, so they’ve got that Call Of Duty money coming in, but it has to stay multiformat or that’ll stop too. And will they dare make it day one on Game Pass? I have my doubts. Xbox has got nothing they can do but shut down studios (the less wages they’re paying the more profitable they seem – at least for a bit, until they run out of games to sell) and basically just run their business like Activision Blizzard was before they bought them.
And yet, in writing all this out I’m not sure which is worse, Xbox or PlayStation. Xbox is the more reckless and clueless, but PlayStation is in essentially the same position and has given up what Xbox has always been so desperate to achieve. PlayStation stopped making games, just like that, and are now, presumably, working on live service titles and almost nothing else.
This is how the death of video games happens, with publishers concentrating on the one or two live service games they have, until they eventually wither and die and there is nothing left but Candy Crush and gacha games. It’s not even just Xbox and PlayStation. 2K had a round of layoffs recently, so they’re basically just GTA and Red Dead and their microtransaction-filled sports games.
EA and Ubisoft, and all the rest, will surely follow and then all gaming will be is indie games, Nintendo, and maybe a few other Japanese developers. Oh… well maybe the great extinction won’t be so bad after all. Especially since the victims brought it on themselves.
By reader Pinky
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