Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are branching in different directions this generation, and it’s interesting to see where they’re going.
The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are already out. How can the Nintendo Switch compete with such powerful consoles? How can Atari come back as a heavy-hitter in the console industry (spoiler: they can’t). In the video, I talk about how console gaming is heading a direction that wasn’t even possible in years past and what this new direction means for the average gamer.
Transcript:
New generations in games are always exciting. It really kicks the hornet’s nest of console war soldiers. People frothing at the mouth as they head to a console manufacturer’s twitter to post about how much they love their competitor. If you want to see the highest minds in society duke it out on a level incomprehensible to us philosophically-illiterate plebeians, look at the replies to any post on the Xbox and Sony twitter accounts. And then there’s the small positive of new technology allowing developers to craft experiences like they’ve never been able to before. But that’s just something to enjoy on the side. The blood sports are where its at.
I’ll save that aspect of console generations for my half hour analysis on the console wars when I hit a million subs. In the meantime, let’s take a peak at the “current” and “next” gen systems, and see how each manufacturer wants to pivot into a way of play.
For reference, when I talk about “this generation”, I’m talking about platforms owned by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Nothing is gonna come close to gaining the amount of players that these consoles have. Atari is not gonna become relevant again with their new console, so I’m not even gonna waste my precious breath talking about them in this context.
So what did I mean earlier about “a way of play”? Here, I want that to mean the different ways someone can play a video game. The ones I can think of are TV, handheld, PC, mobile phones, virtual reality, and streaming.
We’re kind of in a unique situation this generation. The last 2 ways of play I mentioned, VR and streaming (and mobile phones to a lesser extent) are gonna play huge factors in how gaming develops in the coming years. We’re on the precipice of both virtual reality and streaming becoming available to your average consumer. And it’s really interesting to see how each platform holder is approaching these ways of play.
I’m gonna take a look at each of the major platform competitors in gaming today and analyze how their current decisions reflect their long-term plans for the industry.
Let’s start off with the underdog, Microsoft’s Xbox.
If we look at Microsoft’s position coming into this new generation, it’s not the best spot. From a traditional gaming mindset, there isn’t a lot going for the Xbox One. It didn’t have a ton of exclusives that people were interested in. While it did have Halo, it was a series that lost a lot of favor since the development was handed over to 343. There was also Gears of War, Forza, Sea of Thieves, and Ori, but that’s about it to be honest. It had a handful of really great games, but none that are really system sellers, in my opinion.
That’s something I’m gonna touch on real quick, “in my opinion”. There’s a lot I’m going to say that’s opinionated, that’s unavoidable. But when it comes to Xbox and its lack of exclusives, that’s a stance I see expressed as one of the major detractors from the platform. So while it is my opinion that I don’t see the Xbox One has having many system sellers, it’s definitely a widespread enough opinion that I believe it impacted the sales of the console and caused Microsoft to respond by picking up studios left and right a few years ago.
To be honest, the lack of exclusives is the only downside I see to purchasing an Xbox One. There are an insane amount of positives. Most notable being Game Pass. It’s kinda hard to find a definitive number, but I think it features over 200 games for $10 a month. That’s a positively bonkers deal.
There’s two demographics it appeals to. Firstly, it works for all the people that are new to gaming with an Xbox One or now a Series X. If you haven’t played games in a while, or ever, then Game Pass got your back. You have access to hundreds of games for just $10 a month. It’s the perfect way to branch out and find a new passion.
Then you have us. The gaming connoisseurs, that have amassed backlogs of games from dozens of seasonal sales, building libraries of games in the hundreds. Game Pass still has value for that type of gamer. Even though they might own half the indie games on the service, it gives cheap access to any Microsoft first-party title day one. I can’t overstate how massive this is. Sea of Thieves came out a few years ago. Launched at a full 60 dollar AAA price. But I convinced a handful of my friends to join not even for the $10 a month, but for the month-long free trial. We were all playing a brand-new AAA game on release day, for free. Even at the normal $10-a-month, that’s a steal.
Something else that they have going for them is backwards compatibility. The Xbox Series X has full compatibility with Xbox One games, and case-by-case compatibility with 360 and original Xbox games. As I understand it, which is probably not at all, they aren’t running 360 and original Xbox games through hardware like the PlayStation 3 did with the PS2, it’s done in software. So every game they want to have backwards compatible, they have to go to the original publishers and do some new deals. It seems like it was their best choice if they wanted to do backwards compatibility at all, so I’ll take it. Having access not only to the games released for the current console, but previous consoles, is massive.
On to the most important part of Microsoft’s plan for their foray into gaming. Gaming on PC is just as valid to them as gaming on an Xbox. As long as you buy a game from them, they’re happy. They’ve even gone from putting games on PC exclusively on the Microsoft store to putting them on Steam. Why would they do that? Why would they want someone to play games they make on something other than their brand-new console?
Two words. Accessibility and value.
Microsoft wants their games to be as accessible as possible. They’re trying to eliminate all potential barriers from someone wanting to play their games. Let’s say someone wants to play Gears of War 5. What are their options? They can play it on PC, from either the Microsoft Store or Steam, play it on whatever Xbox system fits that player’s price range, or just stream it to their phone. I talked about PC and Consoles, but streaming is their biggest step into accessibility. A lot of people like to dunk on streaming, but I don’t think people realize the potential it holds. Google announced that they’re working on a Stadia feature where, if you’re watching a video about a game on Stadia, you can just click a “Try Now” button on the side of the video and immediately be in a demo for that game. That’s some spontaneity unseen before in the gaming industry.
I don’t think Microsoft has hit on anything that unique yet, but they’re going for a similar thing. If you buy into Game Pass Ultimate for $15 a month, you get Game Pass and the ability to stream those games on your phone. That’s the ultimate “no-limits” gaming experience. You can be playing Forza Horizon 4 on your TV before class, get on the bus to go to class and continue playing Forza, and arrive at class early and continue to play Forza until class starts.
That’s not their only venture into accessibility of course. They’ve started making all of their first party titles available on PC as of a few years ago. They brought games like Forza Horizon and Gears of War to a platform that had been dying to play those games for years. And then they made it even easier to play them by putting a lot of them on Steam. From a business perspective, it makes a lot of sense. You see a lot of the bigger publishers making their own PC game launchers, presumably to take a bigger cut of the sales and to build “brand loyalty” or some shit. Microsoft even did that for a few years with the Microsoft Store. But then they put some of their big hitters on Steam, a program you already have installed on your computer if you’re a PC gamer. This is them saying they’re content opening themselves up to as many people possible, when many publishers are shrinking themselves down so they can have more control on their own platform.
Value is something that goes hand-in-hand with accessibility in Microsoft’s plan. Game Pass is a value proposition. We’ve never seen anything like it before really, at least to this scale. Hundreds of third party games are added (and occasionally removed) monthly and first party games are guaranteed day one additions. Microsoft is trying to make Xbox the obvious console choice for someone getting into gaming for the first time.
Backwards compatibility is something that adds a lot of value to core gamers. As we get further on into the generation, younger people will start to get nostalgic for earlier Xbox One games, and that keeps them in the ecosystem. We already see that with Xbox 360 games. Being able to play old 360 games isn’t really a system seller, since you could just buy a 360 to do that, but it really adds to the (wait for it) value.
It’s interesting to see Microsoft’s multi-pronged approach to gaming. They really struggled in the early days of the Xbox One, but they started to find their niche with the introduction of Game Pass and streaming.
To be honest, there isn’t a whole lot to say about Sony. But I think the fact that there isn’t a lot to say about them, says a lot about them.
For all of the PlayStation 4 and what we’ve seen of the PlayStation 5, it seems like they’re content just doing what they’ve been doing. Making damn good games. No more, no less.
They’ll introduce little things here and there like the in-game help on the PS5, but nothing too industry shattering. You might be asking out loud right now, “But what about PlayStation VR? Isn’t that important?”
To put it simply, no it isn’t. Sony has funded some great games and experiences for PSVR, but its nowhere close to their focus, or even reflects their core values. The only PSVR game I hear about as a “must-play” is Astro Bot: Rescue Mission. I think one game can do a lot for a console, but poor little Astro Bot can’t carry the whole platform on his cold, metallic shoulders. Sony have just been quietly funding games for PSVR and chugging along, but not really making headlines with unique experiences. The fact that PSVR doesn’t even play a tiny part in the PlayStation 5’s marketing speaks volumes about how they see it.
I can speak a lot more favorably about their traditional game output though. The PlayStation 4 is home to some of the best AAA games to come out in a long time. God of War, The Last of Us 2, Bloodborne, Uncharted 4, any one of Bluepoint’s games, Horizon: Zero Dawn, the Yakuza series (although I guess that’s kind of an Xbox thing now), Persona 5, the list goes on. PlayStation 4 is the console to buy if you love single player narratives.
Two words to describe their approach here. Prestige and Traditionality.
There’s definitely been a shift to games-as-a-service over the course of the past generation. Developers and publishers were making games that sought to make money past the $60 it cost to buy the game, and even past the $20-$30 season pass. They wanted to make money for years to come. Games like Destiny come out. Bungie signed a ten year long contract with Activision for it, it was going to be a thing you played for years on end. That’s not something that was possible on the sixth or even seventh generation of consoles. Infrastructure wasn’t there to support the amount of players that games like Destiny 2 or Fortnite are getting nowadays.
Sony seems to be taking a step away from games-as-a-service. They do still engage with them to a degree, like with their Fortnite partnership, but the games they put out are largely like the games from decades past. God of War was a single-player 21 hour game that didn’t have any micro-transactions, a battle pass, or even any story expansions. It did receive some quality of life updates, but for the most part, it was done once it was out in the wild.
Real quick, I don’t think games like God of War are inherently better than games-as-a-service. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey had a lot of elements of a service game, like XP boosters, purchasable cosmetics, and a season pass, but it was still a great game. As long as a game can maintain integrity when including those aspects, then I don’t mind
Sony loves to appeal to the idea of what games were in the past. No publisher trying to wring every penny from your wallet, just you and the developer’s vision. And a lot of gamers still look up to that idea as what they think games should be. They’ll scoff at the inclusion of micro-transactions in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and applaud when CD Projekt Red says Cyberpunk 2077 won’t have any. It’s such a widespread opinion, that companies will market to those people on the fact that they don’t have micro-transactions. Sony, for better or worse, is holding on to the idea of traditional gaming.
Nintendo. A trailblazer of the industry. Constantly innovating and refining to the point where they don’t even really directly compete with Microsoft and Sony. Over the years, I’ve seen so many people talk about the best combination of consoles to have. You’ll see some people argue for PS4 and PC, Xbox and PC, or just a PC. But a majority of discussion settles on a Nintendo Switch + whatever platform has the most unique exclusives to you.
The Nintendo Switch is the culmination of Nintendo’s uniqueness in the space. There’s nothing really like it on the market. It’s a device that can play the same games on your TV or in your hand at roughly the same fidelity. And on top of that, it looks good. The PlayStation Vita was nearly at the point of being acceptable to play on a high resolution TV, but it was just behind the technology curve. The Switch came out at the perfect time to make graphics look good, or even amazing at times, on a 4k TV all crammed into a device not much larger than a smartphone.
I’m just gonna cut to the point. Nintendo wants to focus on flexibility and novility.
Hell, it’s in the name. Nintendo Switch. The console is built around the fact that it can be played in your hands or on a TV. That’s flexibility that no console offers right now. You can stream Xbox games to your phone, but what if you have a data cap? What if you straight up have no internet? Switch got ya back.
Gaming for me has always been a “sit down on the couch and chill” activity. I don’t really, uh… go out, a lot. So I don’t play my Switch handheld very often. I will play it occasionally when I want to have some YouTube in the background on my TV and grind out some Hyrule Warriors, but that’s not very often. A majority of the time, I play on my TV.
There’s no concrete numbers on this in 2020, but it seems like Switch owners are split right down the middle on whether they play handheld or docked. The last official reporting from Nintendo was in 2017, and anything since then has been polling, but it seems like that’s the case. That really surprised me. My bias is definitely showing, but like I said, gaming has always been a “play on my TV” thing. I hate playing on my 3ds or Vita, they’re too small. I bought grips for both of them to make them more comfortable to hold for longer periods of time. Even with that, the screens are still tiny and I’d prefer it on my TV, even if I am locked to that one TV instead of being able to take it to any room or even my local McDonald’s. I’m willing to give up that freedom for comfort.
But tons of people need that freedom to take it anywhere. They don’t have time to sit down for hours on end and play Super Mario Odyssey. They might only have time to grab a few moons in between classes or on a work break. And that’s awesome. I love the fact that we can have the same experience no matter where we are. The graphics aren’t downgraded, the control style is often the same, and the game is actually the same. Gone are the days when a Gamecube game would get a port to the GameBoy Advance and it would be completely different.
Nintendo has always strived to make weird innovations like that. Here it was merging the handheld and tv gaming market and creating weird control schemes, on the 3ds it was about making meaningful games featuring 3d, the Wii was about introducing motion controls to the gaming masses, and you can find dozens of weird peripherals, like the GameBoy Advance gyro sensors built into some cartridges, Wii Balance Board, Nintendo Labo. The fuckin Wii Wheel! Look at it! It’s just a piece of plastic! But people ate that shit up. And lest we forget… uh, never mind.
They thrive on being novel. It’s something that’s defined them before even the most obvious novel Nintendo console, the Wii. I think we got used to the Gamecube over the years, but this thing is real weird. Let’s go over all the weird aspects of it.
Number one. Cube. It’s cube. Console’s aren’t supposed to be cube. Gamecube is cube. Number two. It has a goddamn handle. What the hell is that all about? Who’s gonna be lugging Gamecubes around to play games somewhere other than their house? Number Three. The small discs. I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure the mini-DVD sized discs are the reason for the console’s blazing fast loading times. I played Super Monkey Ball 2 on Gamecube so much when I was younger, and when I played Super Monkey Ball Deluxe on a PS2, I was positively flabbergasted at how slow the loading was. And I’ve noticed it in other games, so its not just an isolated problem, I can promise you that. Number four, it’s purple. Consoles are normally white, gray, or black, and sometimes you’re able to buy weird color variations. But Nintendo really came out swinging making the default system color purple. People had all different colors of Gamecubes, but everyone remembers the iconic indigo cube.
I could make lists like that for a lot of Nintendo’s consoles. The Wii, DS, and even the Nintendo 64. It’s just in their corporate blood to not stay stagnant design wise. Compare the evolution of Playstation’s controllers to Nintendo’s controllers. Sony has basically just iterated upon their original design. And my Dualshock 4 is amazing. I can’t wait to try out the Dualsense 5 and it’s adaptive triggers. You’d be hard-pressed to find any design consistencies between all of Nintendo’s controllers like you can find in Playstation’s or even Xbox’s controllers.
But the desire for innovation isn’t just limited to hardware. It’s present in their software decisions, to a detriment some might say. Nintendo is sitting on some real heavy hitter franchises. F-Zero, Star Fox, Mother, and even Metroid to an extent. Okay well not really financial heavy hitters, but heavy hitters critically. Metroid was never a franchise that sold well, but fans are always frothing at the mouth for a new Metroid. Luckily, they started to acknowledge the series with Metroid: Samus Returns and the upcoming Metroid Prime 4. Let’s just hope that turns out well.
But series like F-Zero and Star Fox are left in the dust. Miyamoto was asked in a 2012 interview about the potential of seeing an F-Zero game on the Wii U, he said, “Why F-Zero? What do you want that we haven’t done before?” It’s kind of a bizarre thing to hear, but it makes a lot of sense if you look at the games Nintendo puts out of long dormant franchises. Star-Fox 3D and Star Fox Zero, Punch Out on the Wii, Pikmin 3, Kid Icarus Uprising, any Rhythm Heaven or Wario Ware game, what’s in common with all these? They all center around a gimmick or control method that utilizes a unique feature of the console it’s released on. Star Fox 3D was to show off the 3d capabilities of their new handheld, Star Fox Zero utilized the Wii U gamepad, often to it’s detriment, Punch Out was playable with motion controls, I could go on forever.
They don’t want to just put out an F-Zero game like GX but with online multiplayer. They want a unique hook, hopefully one that can tie into the hardware of the console, that can give it a reason for existing other than “F-Zero just plays good in general”. That’s what that Miyamoto quote is getting at. He believes these franchises were and are dead for a reason. We haven’t had a new F-Zero game because they couldn’t think of any special way to play with the Wiimote, Wii U Gamepad, DS touchscreen, or Switch Joycons.
It’s hard to say what would happen if they were to settle on releasing “just an F-Zero game” with no special gimmicks or weird hooks, but I think Nintendo’s unbridled desire for innovation leads them down the correct path in a lot of ways, so who am I to judge them here.
Now that we’ve talked about the current state of all three platforms, let’s look forward into the future.
What happens to Microsoft in the coming years?
I can say for certain that they will continue down the service route. It seems like they’re trying to funnel people in to buying Game Pass Ultimate for $15 a month, which includes Game Pass, Streaming, and Xbox Live Gold. That’s a hard value to deny. In addition to getting various third party games on Game Pass, you also get every single first party game on release day. Like I said earlier, it’s a great value proposition to anyone looking to break into gaming for the first time.
Microsoft doesn’t really care about getting people to buy an “Xbox”. They just want people to buy into the Xbox brand. Whether that’s playing on an Xbox Series X, an Xbox One S, a Windows 10 PC, or streaming on your phone, they’re happy no matter what. Hell, they’re currently okay with putting out games like Ori and the Will of the Wisps on Switch. Even if it is a lower-budget title, it shows that Microsoft is okay with you playing their games on other platforms. Does that mean that we’ll see Halo on the Switch or PlayStation 5? I doubt it. But do we see Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls 6 on the PS5? That’s a harder question to answer. Halo has always been a first party IP, but Elder Scrolls was a third party IP up until Microsoft picked up Bethesda a little while ago.
My prediction is that we do see The Elder Scrolls 6 on whatever Sony console is out at the time. Because that’s an absolute shit ton of money that they’d be ignoring, considering how well Skyrim did. Some might say that it would convince people to switch to an Xbox platform, but I’m not entirely sure if they’d make more on new Xbox sales than they would on native PlayStation sales. Either way, Microsoft wins. It’s just about if Sony loses.
Do we see a new Xbox console in 8 years or so like we did with this generation? In my eyes, it all depends on if we see a PlayStation 6. I think Microsoft would be totally okay just dropping the idea of console generations, and just releasing a bunch of incremental improvements like they did with the One X. But them not having a new console to compete with a hypothetical PlayStation 6 at Christmas time in 2028 seems like something they wouldn’t want to do. I think they’re gonna carefully monitor Sony’s strategy and go from there.
So where does Sony stand? Do we ever see a console titled PlayStation 6? I’d say probably. I talked at length about Sony’s admiration for traditional gaming and, unless they drastically stray from that ideology during this generation, I believe that means they have to have some big thing to look forward to and technologically jump forward in 8 years.
I guess the more interesting question is, do we see a midstep this generation, like the PS4 Pro? Now that the precedent has been set, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw one, but I’m leaning towards that we won’t see a PS5 Pro. The thing that set the PS4 Pro apart from the PS4 was the focus on 4k. The next resolution jump is at 8k and I don’t think 8k TVs are going to be popular enough in 4 to 5 years for Sony to feel like they have to make a power jump to a PS5 Pro. While the PS5 does support 8k, I find it hard to believe that we’ll be seeing games hitting that resolution at AAA graphical fidelity, and maintain playable framerates. So I think they’d have to do a power jump for some new Assassin’s Creed game to be playable at 8k.
Are there any other technologies that could benefit from a more powerful console? Virtual reality is one of them. I could see Sony putting out a PS5 Pro that specifically focuses on improved performance to VR in a hypothetical second push for PSVR. But we haven’t seen any PS5 VR games come out yet, so I’ll withhold judgment until we see how they look on the new system.
The most likely PS5 Pro that comes out, is one that has better raytracing support. Raytracing is possible on the PS5, but we’re already seeing compromises in games that feature it. You’ll be able to play a game with it, but the resolution’ll be locked to 1080p. Will gamers be okay dropping resolution to a quarter of it’s potential resolution for raytracing? I don’t know, but I think a hypothetical PS5 Pro that can eliminate the choice between 4k and 1080p with raytracing by providing 4k with raytracing could be a good value proposition.
As for software, I don’t expect them to depart from the course they’ve been on. They’ve shown that streaming isn’t that big of a thing to them. They have no intention of adding first party games to PSNow on day one, like with Game Pass, and they’re keeping everyone on a console with the same power across SKUs, at least right now. The first party games they’ve announced have followed the trend of the games they released this generation, single-player focused narratives with no micro-transactions. I have no reason to expect that they’ll deviate from that track.
Sony is playing it safe. They can see that their competitors are branching out in weird directions and they’re okay just slurping up all the core gamers that they think might get left behind in the new direction of the industry.
I love what Nintendo is doing. The Switch is a few years old, and it really came into its own. It’s the device for dedicated portable gaming. And while that wasn’t really a hard title to achieve considering everything else on the market, I still think it’s admirable. No console developer was able to successfully combine the handheld and TV gaming market into one in such a way until the Switch. And I think Nintendo can afford to make unique decisions like merging the two platforms because high power consoles aren’t really their thing. People don’t expect bleeding-edge graphical technology from Nintendo games, they just want to see a pretty art style. Breath of the Wild doesn’t need the power of a PlayStation 4 to look good, it looks just fine on a Switch. And I think we just hit the point where graphics on a device as small as the Switch can look “just fine” when blown up to 1080p or even 4k on a TV.
Nintendo was always interested in keeping a foot in both the handheld and TV gaming market. So would they ever go back to a strictly “play on your TV” console like the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X?
I don’t think they’ll ever do that. They struck gold with the Switch and it’s uhhh… “Switchability”. They don’t have to have two sets of developers working on separate IPs for different consoles. Pokemon isn’t just a portable franchise anymore. 3D Zelda games are no longer limited to playing on your TV. It’s all experienced on one little device that can fit the needs of so many different types of players, I can’t see Nintendo ever going back to something more specialized.
We’re on the precipice of something truly special in gaming. Each platform holder is going in different directions, and we’re even seeing newcomers try and break into the scene. I made my predictions, but I think it’s highly likely that at least one of the platform holders are gonna throw a real curveball this generation. Are we gonna see AAA first-party Microsoft games get put out on the Switch or PS5? Is Sony gonna get back into the handheld market? Is Nintendo gonna make a new Rhythm Heaven?
The future is uncertain. I can’t wait to make my sequel to this video in 8 years and tell you all about how right I was. And how I made literally zero incorrect predictions.
But that’s… just me. What do you think gaming is gonna look like in 8 years? Is streaming gonna be huge or just kinda meh? Will Nintendo go third party? Probably. Maybe people would start buying Mario games if they were on an Xbox. Let me know how you agree with me in the comments.
You. You right there. Have a great day. See ya on the flip.