In case you hadn’t noticed already, thePS5 Prowill cost £700. You couldbuy 54 copies of Balatro for that price, and I’d heartily recommend doing so. This is the cost for the console alone, by the way, meaning you’ll have to shell out more cash for a second DualSense controller, a disc drive, and astand. I think it’s unconscionable to sell a stand separately from the console it’s made for – how else are you going to stand the enormous thing up? – but the fact that the price for the whole shebang will set you back the best part of a grand is just too much for me.
New games consoles are luxuries, no matter how much the executives at Sony and Microsoft want to turn them into mobile phones that you upgrade every two years. If they truly want this, they’ll have to start offering 24 month contracts where you can pay off the extortionate price bit by bit.
Sony has made several decisions about its games and consoles in the last decade that show where its priorities lie. After the huge success of The Last of Us, it doubled down on its focus onprestige console exclusives: play it on PlayStation, or miss out. Its consoles seem to follow suit; obscenely powerful, premium devices built to render those photorealistic graphics.
There is also a misguided focus on live-service, presumably intended to act as an endless money siphon to fund PlayStation’s prestige games.
Xbox has shown that it can’t compete in this field. Most games perform worse on the Xbox Series X, and the fact that Microsoft wants developers to make their games run on the far more underpowered Series S as well gives them a headache. While it seems to be eschewing the strategy of exclusives that Sony pursues, it couldn’t compete in that arena if it wanted to.
As it stands, the Xbox Series X is just a worse PS5. It can’t achieve the same frame rates, it can’t play the exclusives. The only thing it boasts over Sony’s console is Game Pass, which isgetting more expensive with every passing year.
Game Pass itself is Microsoft’s attempt to democratise gaming, making games cheaper and more accessible. If you pay for Game Pass Ultimate, you don’t even need a console to play your games –streaming them to your phone is buttery smoothand often overlooked. But it needs to go further to make gaming accessible, to present itself as the anti-Sony, if it wants to succeed in the next console generation.
Do you know what the third best-selling game of all time is? Wii Sports. Behind only Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto 5, the game was bundled in with the Nintendo Wii and captured the hearts of families across the world. Never has a console connected generations of players, never before have I played a video game with my grandparents, never has a console or a game been so uniting. This is the energy Microsoft needs to embrace going forward.
I’m not saying that Xbox needs to bring back the Kinect or anything, or continue itsill-fated Kinect Sports Rivals series, but it needs to push itself to be the antithesis of PlayStation. TheXbox Series S may be the opposite of the PlayStation 5right now, but Microsoft could push that further. I want Xbox to make games that octogenarians will want to play as much as toddlers. How will it bottle up that Wii Bowling magic and slap it on a console which requires a controller (an immediate barrier to accessibility) and wants to be able to play the latest triple-A title? I’ve no idea. But it’s the only way forward.
Xbox can’t compete with PlayStation in the premium realms. So it must embrace its ‘play anywhere’ philosophy that currently seems a little half-hearted. Game Pass needs to stream direct to tellies, Microsoft needs to bring out its own range of mobile phone controllers to rival Razer or GameSir. Imagine if that and a subscription you likely already pay for were the only barriers to playing Call of Duty or GTA 6? This is how Xbox can overcome PlayStation’s philosophy.
It may all be sounding a little bitGoogle Stadiaat this point, but Xbox has the chops to make it work. There are also alternatives to embracing game streaming that can recreate the ‘anyone can play’ vibe of the Wii, and I’d like to see Microsoft explore those options too.
But the Wii wasn’t just about the console, the games were great too. While my grandparents loved Wii Sports, they wouldn’t dare dive into Super Mario Galaxy or Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I just about coerced my parents into playing Mario Kart and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, but they wouldn’t touch The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
Nintendo still embodies this idea of making games fun rather than prestigious and, somewhat surprisingly, Sony has come closest to replicating that feeling with Astro Bot. I doubt Xbox will embrace this style of game, and maybe that will be its downfall. Or maybe Microsoft will just chase trends that Sony consistently sets and will continue to fall short. If this is the case, the biggest loser will be us, as console prices will spiral out of control and nobody will be able to afford this hobby any more. If that future comes to pass, we’ve all lost. If Xbox changes its approach, maybe there’s a glimmer of hope.
