"Today, PlayStation revealed that its PS5 has sold 40 million units. Microsoft doesn’t share hardware numbers typically, but court documents, math, and slides from an ID@Xbox in Brazil seem to suggest the Xbox Series X|S line-up is around 20-23 million units sold globally. That essentially puts the PS5 at a 2:1 advantage against Xbox, but perhaps the split is even worse than that beneath the surface. "
I don’t think it’s hardware. It’s a differentiator. Tell me why I (or whoever) should pick an Xbox over a PlayStation?
Microsoft tried to answer that question with Game Pass, seemingly going all in on that concept, paying or outright buying publishers to bring their games to Game Pass. Some people may love Game Pass, but most people I know either never subscribed to it or only tested it when it was like 1,-€ for a month or whatever.
What else differentiates it from the PS5 in a positive way? Sure, the Series X is a bit more powerful than the PS5, but it’s close enough that it basically results in slightly different behavior for games with dynamic resolution scaling, with the PS5 sometimes even pulling ahead oddly enough (probably a more mature SDK, not sure).
The controller is…well, a decent controller. It doesn’t do anything special like adaptive triggers, yet it costs almost the same as a DualSense, and if you count in the optional (!) battery pack, it’s quite a bit more expensive even.
Playing online costs just as much as on PS5 (why do you have to pay extra to play online in 2023, anyways?).
Of the few mentionable exclusive games, most are honestly just mediocre (also in terms of critical acclaim).
What’s left? Backwards compatibility for 360 games? Sure that’s nice, but surely not a system seller for most people, especially when they don’t already have a ton of 360 games.
I just don’t see many cases where someone would prefer the Xbox Series X to a PlayStation 5, without even taking into account what platform their friends are on.
If you want to win market share, deliver a better product. With better services. With better conditions. For lower prices.
That is how it works. Crying to the public about how unfair it is because Sony has such a large installed base already because of how Microsoft fucked up the Xbox One generation (at or even before launch) is NOT how it works.
why do you have to pay extra to play online in 2023, anyways?
The one-time cost of a game isn’t going to cover the ongoing costs of hosting the servers hosting the game.
You do realise that the game developers/publishers need to host the actual game servers themselves, and they don’t get any piece of the PS+/Xbox Live subscription cake, right?
Yeah sure, the store, friends network, voice chat and what have you do cost money to keep operating, but how does it all work so well on PC then - where it’s free - yet on console they want >50 bucks a year for it? They get 30%+ from game sales, you can’t convince me that paying for online is anywhere close to being required for sustainability of the service.
Call me dumb if you want, but I still see a big issue in MSFT’s naming convention for XBox. They need to stop trying to be clever and just do something sequential.
They’re just following the naming convention established by Windows: 1, 2, 3, NT, 95, 98, 2000, Me, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, 11
Only if… if Windows used same scheme as Xbox you’d get:
Microsoft Windows, Windows 95 , Windows XP, Windows One, Windows OS NT, Windows OS One.
Xbox hardware is fine, games are fine, controllers are excellent (long battery life), price is fine…
It’s the brand image that’s shit. All thanks to random naming system that erodes any brand loyalty someone would have.
Yeah. I stopped buying XBox after they let my account get hacked and restored none of my purchased content.
I occasionally consider giving Xbox another try, but then the whole tiers of systems and naming nonsense takes long enough to parse that I remember why I stopped buying Xboxes.
As a current Switch owner deciding what to pick up next time I spring for a new system, the lack of anything portable from Microsoft and Sony is kinda wild to me.
I still rock my Vita, and it makes me unreasonably angry that Sony didn’t seem to take it seriously.
