• mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    7 days ago

    Sony’s been fucked since 2005. The console war is over and nobody told them. Developers want to sell games to customers - and platforms are an obstacle.

    Nintendo doesn’t care because they want “blue ocean” gimmicks with no competition. So: motion, tablet, handheld. Microsoft actively encourages the shift because they expect they’ll be The Only Platform, despite Steam selling so many Windows games that Windows is optional. Meanwhile - Sony has clung to exclusives because that’s what made the PSX and PS2 super duper successful and they do not have a Plan B.

    They keep winning each generation, as if the blue AMD laptop is meaningfully different from the green one. The libraries are 90% identical. They keep having “no games” in the sense they have no games to lord over the other kids on the playground, when their core demographic is 30. This is how disruption always works: fantastic margins on dwindling control. Whatever you have is more profitable than what you don’t! Until suddenly you have nothing.

    The economic case for bribing studios into a single platform is doomed. Has been ever since GTA 3. Really, ever since RenderWare made a generation of PC / PS2 / Xbox / GameCube titles look identical, until EA bought that company and destroyed them. Now every machine is powerful enough, to the point the last-gen PS4 is still relevant alongside the endgame PS5 Pro. Crossplay is the default, because fuck you, of course everyone who bought the same game can play each other. The writing is so clearly on the wall that Microsoft may not bother with another proper Xbox. Does anything think that’s because they’re losing money? Even the studios they delete are profitable. They are fucking around on a level above the 1990s cosplay that Sony desperately wants to maintain.