Console Wars

There’s a story that Nintendo has enough money stashed away to be unprofitable for a dozen years with no impact. That works out since every other console seems to have less than ideal sales numbers. It’s hard to say that they are even in the console wars… aside from connecting to a TV they are really living on their own planet. I would hazard to guess that people don’t think “PS4, XBOX or Switch”. They instead think “PS4 or XBOX… and might as well get a Switch”

XBONE

All joking aside, Microsoft took some rather dumb risks at the launch of their console and followed up with rollbacks. Kinect and always on internet anyone? Instead of focusing on the ease of gaming experience, they went for integration into other services. Don’t get me wrong, that’s hyper useful and an actual cross-platform system (XBOX to PC), but it shouldn’t be the focus.

They do have a solid set of free games when you are a subscriber, but is that enough?

Quick, name me 3 games that are only playable on the XBOX? I’ll help

Forza
Halo
Gears of War
PUBG
Sea of Thieves

All of which are also on PC, but that isn’t exactly a stellar list.

PlayStation

Sony is hyper competitive and anti cross-platform. They are often at the front of the “quality media” trend, but that’s expected when you have a backpocket billion dollars in the media / movie business.

Instead, let’s look at the game front. When the PS4 launched it had a smattering of quality games, and a very large independent game base. It’s moved on to 1st party exclusives. Here’s a sample of top tier games.

Uncharted
Hellblade
Yakuza
Nioh
Street Fighter 5
Final Fantasy
The Last Guardian
Shadow of the Colossus (remake)
Nier Automata
Persona
Horizon Zero Dawn
God of War

Spiderman should be around soon too.

Winner

The ideal state is both quality games and the ability to play with anyone else. Microsoft does the latter, while both Nintendo and Sony do the former. Hard to pick a winner here. Games > integration in my eyes.

But if you’re looking for hours of quality entertainment, it is really hard to dismiss the PS4. It can play any XBOX game (except the above list) and has a dozen “must own” games to boot. Then go out and buy a Switch.