Xboxfans have been smarting recently. The universally belovedAstro Bothas been dominating social media, and thundered to the peak of the OpenCritic and Metacritic rankings to make itself front runner for Game of the Year. When accounts or influencers decorated with Xbox regalia point out that it’s too short, that scores are inflated, that it’s for kids, or that (as one particularly left field shout claimed)Sea of Thievesdidn’t get this level of attention, it feels a little desperate. Astro Bot is unequivocally a win forPlayStation. Now, there is a hole in PlayStation’s foot of its own making thanks to the extortionate $700 price point of the PS5 Pro, and Xbox fans are taking this as a win. Why can’t they see that we’ve all lost here?
PS5sare already expensive. So expensive that gaming is a far less accessible hobby than it used to be. I don’t need to hear the figures on inflation when they’re so out of context with cost of living and wage stagnation. What I know is that everyone I grew up with could afford a game console, even if it meant their parents needed to save up for a while, and these days that is no longer the case. Sony has decided to remedy this obvious problem by releasing a new console that’s even more expensive.
Xbox Has Lost Its Identity And Direction
This is where the Xbox fans get to point and laugh.Microsoftsaw this coming, just as it saw consoles becoming an all-in-one entertainment system coming. Unfortunately, just as it did with the entertainment system pitch of the Xbox One, it saw it coming too soon. The Xbox Series S is a much more affordable path into this generation, but the world isn’t ready for such thinking. As a result, it has no games.
Xbox’s strategy this gen seemed to be targeting the fact gaming was becoming financially inaccessible, and bridging that gap. The Xbox Series S, tied withGame Pass, meant you could hop on the train to the latest gen for a lower price. With Microsoft buying up various studios to go toe to toe with Sony on exclusives, it also gave you access to the biggest games. But that hasn’t really worked out.
Redfallwas a disaster,StarfieldandHellblade 2were (at best) divisive, and the only unqualified win of this era,Hi-Fi Rush, sawthe studio shuttered just a few months later. Meanwhile, former exclusives - including Hi-Fi Rush - havebeen brought to competing platforms, and many games are skipping Xbox altogether. Part of that is Sony still having the upper hand with exclusives, but another factor is the reduced power of the Series S being too much work for devs to bother catering to.
Last year’s game of the year,Baldur’s Gate 3, ended up arriving on Xbox months late because of this very issue. This year, none of the four front runners for Game of the Year (Astro Bot,Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth,Helldivers 2, andBlack Myth: Wukong) are available on Xbox. The low cost of entry doesn’t mean much when you’re too short for any of the rides.
WhileNintendoseems to offer a solution, it’s also its own ecosystem and with claims the Switch 2 will be as powerful as a base PS4, it doesn’t offer a route into modern gaming. A base PS4 cannot run Baldur’s Gate 3.
The PS5 Pro’s Price Point Is A Major Own Goal
This isn’t just to trash Xbox. Astro Bot is a rare bright spark forSonythis gen, and comes from going against the grain. Bloated development cycles meanNaughty Dogmay not produce a single PS5 game despite being Sony’s flagship studio, and trying to make a cheap buck offthe live-service industry has proved to be a money pitwithConcordburied at the bottom of it. It is exceedingly good timing that the Pro follows Astro Bot out the door because this is the only week since the PS5 launched thatit has seemed like a good idea to own one.
Butmany people haveandwill continue to write about how the PS5 Pro is a misstepfor Sony. They may well still sell out on day one, but that won’t change the fact this is a worrying path for gaming to walk down that, like the normalisation of each game taking eight years to make, will have major consequences for the future of game development. I know that this is a silly price and part of a very bad system of constantly being charged over the odds for features we’re told we need.
I also know, oh helpful commentator, that no one is forcing me to buy one. Don’t worry, I won’t be. We can still object to the direction gaming is heading in for reasons beyond a selfish desire to own a machine.
This is a mid-gen console refresh, and they’ve never been much of a big deal to me. I never had a PS4 Pro and were it not for certain Nintendo reviews requiring an OLED, I’d be fine with my launch Switch still. My niece and nephew have mine, and it works fine. The scariest thing in that regard is that we’re apparently halfway through this gen with very little to show for it. I get that we can take it or leave it.
But the thing is, we can’t. Xbox’s strategy has been to keep prices down, and as a result it has been forced into something of a fire sale while its subscription service at the cornerstone of this strategy fails to add the value it promised. But simply, as was the case with the last gen, Xbox doesn’t have enough games to move the needle, and the restrictions of the Series S limit it further. Meanwhile, Sony’s strategy of continuing to swing for the fences and charging more while it’s at it has also resulted in a dearth of games, and feels like extremely short term thinking. Where do we go from here?
