Microsoft CEO Is Asked How Xbox Will 'Win The Console War' With PS5

Don't think he actually commented about beating PS5 directly.
That's unlikely to happen from pure console sale numbers.

He just echoed what Phil Spencer has stated several times, that they are after the bigger gaming audience that ranges from all sorts of devices.
Game Pass is where the money will be made in terms of subscriptions. If you aren't just limited by consoles, you have that 3 billion potential audience that was mentioned.
They already have console, PC and Android, but imagine when they eventually expand to Smart TV, iOS etc.

Simple.... He won't
Xbxo are doing their own thing with gamepass and are aiming for a cloud based future and will have more users on pc and mobile than the actual xbox systems themselves.

There is no real sales console war now, in terms of console sales, if we are to believe what we are told.
I guess now with third party titles near identical it just comes down to personal preference with exclusive games, controller and personal taste and sometimes personal financial situation with regards Game prices and game pass.
It’s like for me the PS5 is not a nice looking console and to big, but I enjoy the exclusives.
The series x is a better looking more compact designed console and I like game pass.

Toxic shareholders they actually ask how to win the console war, lol 😂 that's some fanboy level of question.

Sales wise, i personally think xbox won't win this gen but will close the gap significantly compared to the reality we had now. Playstation is officially available in much more countries compared to xbox and that's already a huge advantage.

@endlessleep
I don't ms every thought they could win. My understanding is they are going after cloud users and making pretty good inroads with that attempt

Guess the question depends on who you ask. As MS will sell a lot less consoles they will say "making as much money as possible" through cloud gaming is the priority so they can "win" something, while Sony will say console sales is their goal because they sell the most so they "win" at something else.

Its just odd that us 'players' go to the same level. For me the winner is the one that gets my purchase because there are games worth playing on it, which will end up being both machines in the end (already have a Switch as well so they "win" too). They'll all make money so their rich shareholders will be even richer and us paupers will stay paupers so everyone wins - but we'll still fight their corner anyway.

I always have to wonder what the "console war" really even has as a front line? Global units sold? Well that's a mute war if one product is competing in more markets than another. Regional/market based wars? I mean Xbox has about as much chance of winning in the UK as the SNES did. But in North Americal (or the Americas at large)? I can see Xbox winning. That's probably the only market it can "win" in - but I think "the world" really underestimates the popularity of Xbox here, in the worlds biggest individual gaming market.

Kind of like how Nintendo had the problem of Japan wanting handhelds only and "the world" wanting consoles only they needed Switch to solve, Microsoft has a problem where NA, or broader "the Americas" region is a strong market for the Xboxes, but "the world" never really bought in.

Like @Tharsman was saying the other day, the internet, and especially this British family of sites, from worldwide, can really skew your view of Xbox as unloved and insignificant. People outside the NA region probably can't picture that XB is as popular, if not more popular in many areas here, so the internet narrative always feels completely misplaced.

Just yesterday I was watching TV, which I rarely do, but, Holiday specials. I saw Target and Walmart ads flashing images (probably paid placement) of big holiday items. Both of them showed Series X. Both showed Switch in different commercials, or have in years past. Neither showed Series S. Neither showed PS5. In the very rare times I've watched TV in the past 5 years of so, I've actually seen several Switch commercials or retailers showing Switch in their ad. I've seen X1X in two or 3 ads (a joint ad with an ISP, and one or two others), and of course this years retailer commercials that show an XB as one of the big items for the holiday.

The last time I saw a Playstation commercial was that famous dystopian future city ad for the PS2 back in the late 90's while watching Star Trek or some such. Perhaps they advertise with programming I don't watch, FIFA games or the like But the point is, Xbox is very present in the US, stores have big Xbox sections in the US, and PS isn't as heavily promoted, but the two are roughly equally popular, ebbing and flowing at different times.

So for MS, reaching "the world" means thinking outside the console box space, and thus the cloud services and PC focus. Which is, of course, even to me, what Xbox is all about. It's a console with continuity from my PC gaming days. I never really think of it purely as a "console" anyway. It's more like a mini-PC without steam and without the constant driver conflicts.

@StonyKL Not to mention, neither company's goal is to actually sell consoles (despite the way Sony words their intentions.) The consoles lose money in the worst of times and gain minimal money in the best. They just want a large install base in which to sell games. Primarily third party games (besides the perception of an obsession with exclusives. Exclusives cost so much they don't return much. They're advertising more or less....the third party licensing is the real money prize.) So if MS actually succeeds in their goal of cloud and the like, and they can get a similar number of players feeding right into purchases and subscriptions without having to lose money on as many hardware sales, they actually win, financially, even if they "lose" in hardware units numbers sold.

It's weird that we've shifted to that hardware units sold metric. That's just a proxy number to estimate real revenue generating sales from software and potential market reach. None of them actually care about the units sold on its own. MS figured out a scheme to bypass having to sell the hardware units and still expand their market reach via cloud PC GP. So naturally everyone focuses on hardware sales

It's like counting sales of Donkey Kong by how many arcade cabinets they shifted.

@NEStalgia I agree. I’m not sure if people realize that it’s a lot closer in the USA than other regions.

PS4- 33,000,000
XB1 - 28,000,000 (estimated)

Xbox won't ever win the console war, and they are not trying to either. That's the whole point.

Now, if you wanted to ask how xbox is going to with the "platform" war?, that's a more relevant question.

There aren't 3b gamers -.-

It's just a wrong way of categorizing gamers and ended up being 3b.

Go make clash of clans type of games, because that's what'll be needed

Deep down everyone is a fanboy lol..

@Hypnotoad107 Yeah I think US has always been known to favour the American products in general. I actually thought there were more Xbox's sold in US than PS's. I get the impression Americans are more loyal when it comes to selecting products compared with the rest of the world.

The "console War" days are over. the stockholder was probably given that question by their 14 yr old nephew or something lol

@Kefka2589 Yeah, and I similarly hadn't realized that in Europe, or at least parts of it, XB is so unhealthy. I knew it was true in Asia, but Europe surprised me. It's a totally different public perception over there like they're talking about an Ouya when they say "Xbox." Same here, most Game Stops have always had much bigger Xbox sections than PS. Walmart, too. Target has a bigger Nintendo section than either MS or PS. The X1's failure skewed the numbers somewhat, but I absolutely wouldn't be surprised if XSeries does handily win the hardware unit contest in the US. People "play xbox" rather than "play games" - the same way in my day we "played nintendo" I haven't seen gaming stores in the UK but I get the feeling it's viewed as a B-side there. Not Japan bad, but not good. But I don't think the Brits get that over here it's omnipresent and a major brand....and this is a much bigger gaming market.

@StonyKL I don't know so much about favoring American products here. For industrial manufacturing, yeah, there's been many pushes for US made goods, both from the perspective of protecting industry and jobs, and a perception of quality versus cheap junk from Asia, but that never really carried over to electronics that have been from Asia from the start And European-made is generally agreeable or even seen as premium along with American made, and increasingly Japan-made as well. It's not quite the same as Japan's Japan-centricness of only buying Japanese company products on principle. I don't think Xbox has ever succeeded here "because it's American", and most American's probably have no idea where either company is headquartered and/or think Sony is American (and these days they more or less really are...) I think the marketing, placement, messaging, etc was just more on-point from the start of the OG Xbox, here, and they no doubt spent a lot more energy to secure this market back in 2000, so the brand just cemented much better here.

It's kind of like Nintendo in the UK back in the day. Sega ruled the roost because Nintendo's messaging and positioning just wasn't handled well and Sega cemented itself through better messaging. Xbox rolled out in force back when it first launched. It was a huge campaign and it was in front of everyone, everywhere. So the idea that it was a big thing landed with it (and back at that time, Win2k/XP was just coming around so there was a bigger awareness of MS in general in daily life that helped.)

Now, tools, trucks, appliances, there's a bigger "buy American made" campaign around that - partly promoted by unions to defend traditional union jobs from globalism. And partly a consumer push. When I see made in US, CA, EU, UK, JP, even MX, I know I'm probably getting a well made, well QC'd product. When I see made in China, Malaysia, India......I know what I'm getting, and it isn't that. it's made there, because it's cheap to do so, not because of a record of top quality. But that's never applied to electronics because we've never actually made any here outside bespoke industrial parts and CPUs.

But let's be honest: Switch will outsell both of them in the US, regardless of where it's headquartered.

@StonyKL You’ll hear a lot of Americans say we need to “buy American” until they realize it’s cheaper to buy a similar “made in China” product on Amazon for a fraction of the price. I don’t think there really is a loyalty to US products. Surely, Xbox is just bigger here because of the big push during the xbox360 era. It was huge in America (and widely available) for that year before the PS3 released. I think moreso than in other regions.

Short answer is Microsoft hopes Xbox Series S will win the console war. But that would be a bonus. Really Microsoft really badly wants to win the cloud gaming war because that's where the biggest bucks are. Ultimately it's a war not of boxes but of games providing and Microsoft does hope to become the world's best provider of games. So Microsoft won't outcompete Sony, they'll outfox them by leveraging cloud bucks to create the best games. Sony probably will win in straight PS5 versus XSX numbers but Microsoft is playing a different game by competing with Stadia for virgin territory. I expect Stadia to drop out at some point. Google tends to lack staying power for anything that isn't search or language translation.

It's no longer a console war (Sony would always win that), it's a gamers war.
Consoles are a loss for both companies, gaming is where the money is and the number of gamers, hence game sales will be what brings in the profit.
Both Sony and Microsoft are starting to go in different directions this generation (PS5 & Series X/S) and I feel Microsoft have chosen the right path from a business point of view.
Sony will sell more PS5's but even the sales of a big Sony exclusive are limited to the number of consoles sold.
A big Microsoft exclusive can sell a copy per console, plus a "day one" Game pass sale on Mobile, PC and potentially Smart TV's etc..
I'll be owning both consoles one day, I would have bought a range of exclusives on my PS5, but a constant subscription fee (plus any permanent purchases from titles I discover) to play on my Xbox console or mobile, and also any 3rd party titles.
The money's in the software.

@Kefka2589 Fortunately neither Sony nor MS is naieve enough to look at global hardware numbers and call it a day. Sony may PR the numbers, but internally they know that's not a straight "win". That's a PR talking point and a fanboy anthem only.

Sony always thinks people will buy a luxury anything. It's their achilles heel. They consistently go premium and price themselves out of every market they enter, and end up only with very thin niches to gouge. Remember the ridiculous Sony Style stores? I've never seen a company build a monument to their own hubris other than Apple. Sony thought they had a weird cult-like following like Apple, but outside 80's Japan, they never did. PS3 was at the height of the Sony Style rollout. Going premium/luxury is Sony's M.O. across all categories. Which is frustrating. They've never truly been a designer product like Apple, they have some decent hardware out there, but at their price points, they're always up against exotics that are better. They can't help themselves. Sony's always been Sony's worst enemy.

Rumor has it that they were planning to charge quite a bit more for PS5 and once again sell it as a luxury console, minimizing losses. They only kept it down with "project nimble" responding to XSX. Ironically, XSX probably saved PS5 from Sony's hubris by forcing them to price competitively. I imagine those amazing sales numbers would have been diluted were it $700+ again!

X1, though.... I realize it was one man's vision and Ballmer's ruthless belligerency that built that thing. But that was a nightmare I never saw coming. Coming off the 360's high I watched both presentations that year, and was pretty much agape the whole time and the EASportsTVFootballBox (Feat. Spielberg) (C) 2013 IngSoc - how could any console possibly seem so completely undesirable? I laughed at the thing for years, I predicted MS would exit consoles at the end of the gen, and ignored the existence of the platform. And then Phil arrived. And XSX arrived. I watched the E3 presentations as a joke almost.... at least it's more content. But at some point the presentations became good. The "highest quality pixels anyone's ever seen" meme console actually looked desirable somehow.....I went from mocking XB and predicting they would be done with consoles to being primarily excited for it. That's transformational leadership at work. One man's vision (and a bottomless bank account) can resurrect the most damaged of brands. It's post-GCN Iwata-level work there. And Jim Ryan can do the opposite. Even if XB isn't ascendent worldwide, streaming will be. And Nintendo continues to rise (even in the UK!)

@Kefka2589 Yeah, I get that. I like mine, but I do recognize that sensation you're talking about and I agree. PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP, Vita....they all felt "playstation" - PS4....was also kind of weird in that it felt kind of like the XBox 720 that the One never was, but never really felt like a playstation to me, either. But yeah, the PS5 does feel like it's trying really really hard to be a product for a certain market that only tangentally includes me.

I still get this feeling that everybody that buys only Playstation also uses Apple phones and computers. It just feels ever more Apple-like....which also isn't for me. For the trendy, the creatives, the arthouse....the people that wear eyeglasses that look like they were borrowed from the Nixon administration, in 2020.... The sculpturesque chassis is either an appeal to a certain demographic or a dramatic overcompensation for the fact that PS4 looked and felt like a Radio Shack project box made of recycled plastics.

Or maybe it's just that the UI is so bad and incomplete that it gives the feeling it's going for impressionism and only the arty understand?

Either way.

(Seriously, I can't even filter games by platform or what storage device they're on. Switch's UI feels more complete....and it does nothing at all!)

I do like it...but yeah, I feel what you're saying about it....I agree.

@Kefka2589 LOL...yeah, hipster fusion....that fits. Although of course everything about it makes you want to go to Burger King...that's the point of the subliminal messaging in the Burger King tie-in after all.

Oh look, Master Chief.....I need Taco Bell and Monster Energy now....

Since the Apple invasion, useless has certainly become classy! Nothing says $1000 worth of telephone like a device I can't even copy my music files on and off without a proprietary tool and file format to do it like it's a Palm Pilot resurrected from 1998!

The PS5 UI certainly is simplistic and sophisticated. You press home and you get a minimalist row of icons, because in 2020 we've reverted to hieroglyphs. Who needs words when we have stick figures and cave drawings? Except it has a switcher that doesn't do anything because there's no quick resume, and a bunch of buttons that do nothing useful (the UI is perhaps designed for pro streamers?). Want settings or your actual game library? Press and hold to go to the desktop. But then you can't turn it off. Want to turn it off? Then short-press and scroll to the end of the icon row, because if we did press-and-hold for power like every single other console with a UI, ever, including the ones from the same brand, that wouldn't be hipster enough! We want everything to be different because it's new. I'm surprised Triangle isn't "ok" and "create" isn't "cancel." After all, share is now create because I don't know.

It's a UI designed for cartridges.

But I forgot, above the simplicity of the runic symbology cuz wrds r 2 hrd we have the row of "cards" that are like the spawn of an unholy union between Google Now, which, to my knowledge, not a single person has ever actually used, and Youtube thumbnails. I just will continue ignoring them until they let me disable them somehow.

I technically like the system, but I mostly just like the games and the background music on the various panels being all zen-like. And yeah, I do actually like Dual Sense. XSX controller just molds into my hand and disappears, but as far as Sony controllers go, I like DS5 more than all the others. And if XSX controller didn't exist....or Switch Pro, I'd actually love it. I'm not keen on the gimmick though. Cool idea, but the trigger resistance just isn't that relevent. if it were force feedback sticks, I'd adore it...but just the triggers...meh. I want Nintendo to give me those optical sticks they now have a patent for. No more drift!

XSX is just a joy to navigate and switch around games on. I spent months cataloguing my entire library into folders. Then I created a new one for "installed on SSD" and just play on there. jumping in and out of the UI to switch or the like is simple. No weird multi-tiered menu where no one half has everything. It's the much more fun console to just jump around a library.

@Kefka2589 I didn't think real humans ever actually won those contests! That's pretty incredible!

Haha, well the ps5 walks into the jokes the same way Xbox Done did. They can blame the pandemic all they want for an unfinished beta console, but they've been telling us for 2.5 years, right before they abandoned e3 they've moved on to working on ps5. Gamestop had to explain to shareholders their revenues were down due to ms and Sony announcing they were moving to new consoles earlier then normal. What were they doing for 2 years that they still had an unfinished os with entire features the ps4 had missing even before the pandemic?

I like playing games the console plays. And i enjoy rather than hate using the controller compared to prior ps. But the console itself feels like a boot loader for discs... You never really use the system because it doesn't do much beyond load a single game. Like switch. But big and ugly. And unwanted and unavailable in Japan.

Ironically I've probably spent slightly more time on it than xsx so far simply because i like miles. But booting miles is the only thing i really do on it until i get sackboy. Xsx i play around in the interface, browse the store, browse gp, switch between more games....i use more of the console itself. Glad to have both. Enjoy both. But ps5 is best at playing a single game and somehow does it pretentiously.

Whoa, auto hdr works with x1 games that don't have hdr?? I did not know that! That's pretty cool!

@Kefka2589 that's really cool! For some reason i thought auto hdr was only for og and 360 games. Granted most x1 games for 1x patches and hdr, but then there's ones like dq that's brand new and doesn't have it. (Grr, yakuza 7 doesn't have hdr, but doesn't get auto hdr since it's an actual series xs game!)

I'm going to have to try deus ex... Both hr and md. Md i play on ps because it has a pro patch and not a 1x patch... Probably still better there, but I'm curious. Hr just looks trash.,. Directors cut really really needs bc. Actually it has bc but disc only, no digital version available.... And i doubt my wiiu disc will help (even if the game was meant as a wiiu exclusive from the start... )

@NEStalgia @Kefka2589

Its sad the way yall hate on Sony on this site all day but when somebody says one negative thing about Microsoft or xbox yall ban them for "trolling." Do you know how bad that makes this community look?

@NEStalgia
Also, how can you say the PS5 is a beta console or rushed product when Microsoft's excuse for the Series X "underperforming" is due to them not having their toolset ready less than 6 months prior to the Series X launching?
They also admitted to starting production late.
There must be a reason out of 23 studios, not a single first party game launched with the series x or even has a release date.
Halo Infinite proved the Series X wasnt ready for launch thats why it literally looked like a last gen game and got delayed.
Even Phil Spencer just realized Sony outbeat them in the controller department.
And if you not up to speed on the consensus with the media and gaming public, the Series X has ZERO innovations for gaming this gen leaving the PS5 feeling like the only TRUE "next gen" console.
Im not trolling just putting facts into perspective.

Its cool to have an opinion but you really just sound like a hater dissecting the PS5's UI flaws as if xbox doest have MAJOR flaws that keeps most gamers away every gen.

@12TerribleFLOPS Incoming text wall, but it seemed appropriate to address your points. No, we're not "hating on Sony all day" - as you see in my posts above, I like my PS5, but I'm also calling spades spades about it. I'm both a Playstation and Xbox (and Nintendo) fan. So is @kefka2589, but something about the PS5 turned him off after being dedicated PS until now. In my case I do like PS5, but there's also a lot - a looot of missteps going on at Sony in general right now (and there's a lot of trends and patterns to Sony Corp's history in general that are manifesting in PS now, as it did with PS3.)

It's more a matter of running with the memes when there are one. And make no mistake, 7 years ago it was Xbox that was the brunt of the memes while PS4 did little wrong to pick apart. This time it's Sony making all the meme generating missteps while MS has done little wrong to pick apart.

But you're missing that we're two Playstation fans, one past, one current, satiring things that have gone wrong with PS5 within the context of also being Xbox fans. My roasting of the UI's condition comes from a place of interacting with it daily, side by side with XSX, not trolling complaints from the outside. I like the console, but there's large room for criticisms as well - and yes, I make the same criticisms on Push Square as a fan, though of course not in as satirical a tone as is appropriate here.

But speaking of things that don't look good, why is it only Sony fans that seem to enter Xbox conversations criticizing PS to complain about it, while I virtually never see Xbox fans on PS site entering conversations criticizing Xbox or Game Pass, do the same? Strawmen only work if you're not using it against someone that's actively on both sides of the conversation.

And yes, there are aspect of both consoles that were last minute. For XSXS that ended up on the devkit side, and has affected game performance, apparently. While they had a reason to push it late (they were waiting on AMD to finalize some features they were using, and AMD delivered late) it doesn't change that both companies were rushing product when it wasn't ready just to play the silly arms race. I'd agree there. But the difference, from a customer perspective, is that PS5's incompleteness is glaring and consumer-facing, while XSX's rushed aspects are not consumer-facing, they're on the B2B side of the arrangement where the effect is seen in games performing less optimally than they could have rather than a WiiU-grade visibly unfinished OS with entire standard features simply missing, with placeholder icons in the way. They both rushed to try to race each other, they both have problems because of it. But launching with a visibly incomplete product is still a worse look than a complete product with teething issues, from a customer perspective. Especially when it's missing basic functionality PS4 had early on, and rest mode can corrupt your data, that's a very beta launch.

Halo Infinite's problem is that 343 is a mess, no question. They have been a mess, and they weren't fit for the task. They've more or less had to admit that and have a staff shakeup. Among the other studios, most are newer aquisitions that have been pushing out multiplat games they already had contracts for. They were never going to be ready with an AAA game in time for launch, or even in the next 2 years simply because development didn't start until the past 3-4 years, and an AAA takes 5-7 years to make.

From here, though you're veering into fanboy territory. Stating opinions and supposition as "fact" and relying on "consensus" as an argument don't work. Generalizations about "flaws that keep most gamers away" also do not work.

I don't do favorite corporate brands, defend publicly traded corporations from internet attackers, or team colors. I'm a customer of all three console vendors. I'm criticizing where the holes are. I like all the consoles, but from the perspective of someone sitting down to all of them more or less daily, my impression remains that XSX feels like a complete console with a customer-focused business approach, and some minor expected launch wobbles, but an overall solid product with little to criticize. PS5 launched with a half-finished OS, visible not just to Xbox owners, but to PS4 owners, system-breaking bugs, they still can't seem to identify, a woeful lack of storage with no actual focus on helpful features to help players manage those games (and a data corruption bug that makes connecting external storage a risk for the moment) all wrapped within anti-consumer business policies that are dripping with past Sony corp policies in areas beyond gaming. And the leadership of each company has radically different approaches, with Spencer being very direct and open with the customer and (arguably a little too) communicative, while Ryan seems to speak to investors and speak of the customer openly as an exploitable resource to improve company metrics. It's the same kind of approach many, myself included, lambasted MS for in Don Matrick's time.

It's not speculation or fanboy flaming or assumptions based on reading about them on the internet and jumping into conversations to defend one from the other. It's my daily experience with both machines and my current view of where both sit. That doesn't mean I dislike or "hate" the PS5 at all. I don't. I'm enjoying it and looking forward to a number of exclusive games for which I bought it to play. But at the same time I'm choosing to buy all of my multiplats on Xbox for all the above reasons and simply enjoy using the "console" itself more with Xbox, while PS5 indeed feels like a player to play one cartridge at a time. If you take the "fan" hat off and look at both products as a "consumer" instead of a "fan", PS5, and Sony's business approach currently have a lot of glaring holes worth criticism. XSX simply doesn't have that same level of consumer-facing problem to overcome. Developer/partner facing problems, perhaps. But not consumer-facing. "Consensus" based on popularity contests, trending culture, marketing, FOMO, and herd mentality doesn't change the opnions one draws when actually using two similar products side by side. And the only way to draw realistic comparisons and criticisms is to actually have both products to compare. If you have only PS5, and not XSX you really can't offer a fair evaluation of what is or is not a problem when comparing what each machine is doing right or wrong. If you do have both, you haven't presented a first-hand opinion of what you're criticizing about XBox, instead relying on conceptual arguments exclusively.

@Kefka2589 It's the internet....there's one line of thought that's tolerated and everyone must conform. If the world tells you something is the best, then it's the best, preferring something else i not allowable, and having complaints about said thing is trolling. All things should have one option only because why should anything but the best choice exist. If it worked for the Soviets it can work for capitalists too!

PS fans are just weirdly defensive though. There's a mindset that seems to say "I've chosen the winner, and everybody should choose the winner." Only taken to an extreme that you must only choose the winner and not the winner in addition to all the "losers". Push Square doesn't really have Xbox, Nintendo, or PC fans jumping on the forums telling everyone their PS sucks and they're all trolls for complaining about what they dislike on the others. But both NLife and PXB get Sony fans jumping in all the time telling them how inferior their choice is and how invalid their PS complaints are.
It's embarrassing being a PS fan at times....I don't want to be associated with that mentality.

There are of course fanboys in every community but fanboys of most platforms except PS seem to stay in their own fan communities without feeling the need to cross over just to start arguments in others. Our native fanboys here aren't heading over to Push Square and Nintendo Life to pick fights...but the other way around is all too common.

There was one Xbox fanboy/troll on NLife for a while....he got banned eventually, but even he, I was able to have arguments with that would be two directional, and ultimately, actually he turned out to be right (I, at the time, thought Xbox was doomed and argued that ponit. This was before X1S/X came out.) But I can't think of any others in either other direction. It's always the PS fans that do that.

Well, except Menchi's constant PC master race trolling

@NEStalgia Its clear you dont understand what "consumer friendly" means. I remember xbox fans saying MS was more consumer friendly and "transparent" about the SX because they showed the console and did hardware teardowns in March. But can you agree more consumer friendly info at that time should have been that their SDK wouldnt be finalized until June which may result in poor optimization for launch titles, instead of lying and using it as an excuse after launch? You dont think anyone who seriously bought a SX because Phil said "multiplats will perform better on it" arent feeling buyers remorse right now?

See the way Sony warned upgradeable SSD storage may not be available for PS5 at launch way back in April, thats transparent. If MS cared about gamers more than any other corp. they would have let Bugi keep Halo. The game would have went multiplat but at least fans would have had a great game. Phil Spencer's sweet talk and promises are not consumer friendly, he's just trying to backtrack Don's mistakes as he made evident in an interview. But i think his failed Series X performance promise put them back at ground zero.

MS sat on their hands and waited for AMD tools, Sony on the other hand collaborated with devs and developed the PS5's architecture around what they said would make their jobs easier. They then collaborated with AMD to help build RDNA 2 and customized certain tools to meet what developers said they wanted. They did the same with PS4 development. THAT sir is why games are better optimized on PS5 and why Sony's launch and 1st year lineup is so strong. Sony is more in touch with the game industry and they have better relationships with devs, as a consumer, that benefits me 100%.

you can stand by your decisions and opinions but even if I had an xbox I would buy all multiplats on PS5 purely to support the investment Sony makes to ensure the developers can make the games I love to play efficiently. More businesses need to be like this! multiplats sell on PS 2-4:1 vs xbx so Sony is receiving their good karma anyway(see how consensus puts certain arguments to rest)

MS does not respect the game industry, they just want to monopolize it and it shows in their approach and product delivery. MS buying multiplat studios instead of growing from within and building relationships with devs first seems to be hurting them AND YOU more than helping anyone. Look at Sony's approach to buying studios, they acquire studios they have close relationships with and grow them to be better. They dont just buy mega publishers to try and drain their competition.

It didnt take 3-4 years for Insomniac or Sucker Punch to deliver games after they acquired them, the games and acquisitions happened almost simultaneously. If Sony wanted to they could buy Form Software, Kojima, Square Enix and it would make perfect sense because they already make iconic Playstation games. These are the qualities about Sony that matter most to consumers not PR sweet talk and obviously keeps them ahead of MS. Everything else you complain about is nonsense.

I use consensus and facts because I only have 1 opinion and they support my opinion. I dont need a bunch of opinions on top of opinions like you. Opinions without facts are meaningless

@NEStalgia @Kefka2589

Im not trying to tell you what to do with your money or what to enjoy, I just read the comments and responded in the same energy and making the same points as you just putting things into better perspective for you

I like Playstation, you like xbox, im not mad or anything, lets just have some convos supporting our opinions thats as far as it should go. i like having convos like these but i know imma get banned anyway.

well i never said much to you but nice to know you waste your time replying to stuff you dont care about, i guess

@12TerribleFLOPS I wouldn't say you're not putting things "in better perspective, " You're visiting an Xbox focused site, not to discuss your personal experience, positive or negative, with your Xbox consoles, but instead, to discuss often repeated talking points in an imaginary console war. Yet you're missing the point that you're trying to make those points against someone who also made the "best choice" with you, as well as an alternative choice, and finds a number of things more favorable about the alternative choice, and has specific criticisms against the "best choice."

This isn't a zero sum discussion. Liking, and preferring the way Xbox does things does not mean a rejection of Playstation. Nor does having specific criticisms about what they're doing. Too many of these discussions assume criticizing things about one brand and favoring things about another means one has chosen "sides" and the two are opposed. It's possible to like Playstation despite having complaints about some of what they've done, just as it's possible to like Xbox despite having had serious complaints about what was done with X1. Liking one console isn't mutually exclusive with liking another.

Criticism about how MS deployed development kits is valid. They have a reason, but the end result of that is a valid issue if one isn't happy with how games are performing (then again, we have few games to compare at the moment, most of them are slightly-dolled up PS4/X1 games at best, and Valhalla isn't exactly a fantastic demonstration of PS5, either....)

But again, MS and Playstation have different design goals in their dev kits. Just as MS and Apple do for their computer development. Playstation is trying to deliver the tools Playstation specific developers want to simplify the process. Microsoft is trying to bring their console development in line with Windows and cloud games development. That requires a different tool kit and a different approach that has always been part of the purpose of Xbox. It may be a more difficult to use kit, and that may be causing some issues, but the underlying goal is to mostly unify PC development with console. That's always been the goal of Xbox.

(Continued, apologies for the text wall!)
I realize if you're entrenched in Sonys ecosystem you probably haven't been following the goings on very closely with these other companies and everything involved. But just jumping in with the tired "MS is just buying everyone, they don't care about games they just want to monopolize the industry, etc, etc" is old, overused, incorrect, and demonstrates a lack of familiarity with the events surrounding the brand and its offerings. It's a regurgitation of a wholesale canned internet debate platform about a product you don't actually have meaningful (or any) first hand experience. And at the moment, neither console really has an array of software designed for the new hardware that really showcases clearly where the differences even lie. In all liklihood there isn't going to be a clear cut winner. Different games are likely to favor different platforms. And BC is easily better on XSX. That's not a determination based on the "facts" of reading lots of opinions and arguments on the internet and sticking with what makes sense. That's a determination based on actually sitting down and running BC games on each console daily since launch. One platform is set up to connect your entire library seamlessly as one giant library. The other platform is set up to segment games and has inconvenient management and coordination of it all, and only a limited subset of it to boot. And, yes, painfully limited storage even in contrast to the other's already constrained storage.

Neither of these companies have a particularly friendly history. Favoring the one being friendlier to your own interests at the moment is really all that can be done. Sony isn't this white knight in shining armor fans make it out to be. They're actually a pretty darned nasty company. They've always been a pretty darned nasty company. And now it's showing through on their PS division that was more insulated from that a few years back. And MS, as part of the sextet of "big data" companies is inherently one to watch out for as well. There's no "fund the good guys" argument to be made among the two of them. They're both rich, ruthless, and playing them against each other to get the best consumer value is the ideal state at this time.

There's not a "winner" here, there's two products that are very similar but offer something somewhat different with a different monetization model, different list of incentives, and different cost-benefit to the consumer. There's not an argument going on of which is "better." And when the argument tends to fall back on "Sony has great games" - well, sure they do, which is why I bought a PS5. Just because I'd rather play Control and KH and Watch Dogs on XBox, and build out my library there doesn't mean I can't also appreciate the work of Sony's studios as well. But as an environment and ecosystem, the "facts" aren't things I need to read on the internet. I can turn on both consoles and go through the menus, and it's readily clear which one is set up to be used more flexibly.

And no, you're probably not going to get banned. You don't seem to be trolling for arguments specifically, you're expanding on your view point in a friendly way. I do think your argument is very flawed, relying on the trending console warrior talking points and narratives rather than actual personal observation and awareness of the underlying complexities and goings on, but I don't get the sense you mean harm or are trying to start fights just to watch flame wars, so you're fine.

But I would say that you may want to examine your position, namely, promoting the benefit and experience of one platform over another based only on hearsay, talking points, opeds favoring that opinion, public popularity, and and internet rhetoric, without actually having real experience living with both ecosystems for yourself. And I don't mean picking one up for an hour somewhere else and deciding "I don't like it" - I mean actually living with the environment for a time for your own. It's the stuff of political rallies, deciding to align with all the values of one side and presume everything on the other side is meritless because it doesn't align with the faction you choose to ally with. Arguments about why the one product/company is better than the other, without having lived with the other.....while arguing with people that have or have had both, rings very hollow. You're trying to persuade people that have more direct perspective on all the involved points than yourself, and your own points can offer. Your characterization of Playstation is inaccurately idealistic, and your characterization of Xbox is inaccurately pessimistic. Neither reflects the real experience of participating in the platforms as a consumer, and what one assumes the other platform may be like from the outside can easily be very different from the experience of actually participating in it.

For a bit of further perspective, I've had the Atari 2600, NES, SNES, Sega Genesis - stopped sega after they made a mess with 32x - Virtual Boy, then went PC-only for quite a long time, and while I never had a physical PS1, I have a sizable (legit) PS1 library I played in emulation on PC at the time. I got a PS2 late, mostly for Squaresoft titles but built a decent library. Wii, PS3 Phat, was sorely, sorely disappointed with everything third party and ended up getting a 360 which, like you, I was wrongly biased against. I ended up really liking it. WiiU (which died too soon ), 3DS, PSVita (which died before it was born), I was on the fence the next E3, but Matrick made the choice of PS4 easy. There wasn't much to like about XB at that time until Spencer turned things around, introduced 1X/1S and I bought in on a whim to use as "my digital console" along side PS4....and ended up liking it more overall. And of course Switch. Series X thus continues what I already liked about 1X. I had very high hopes that PS5 would take up the queues from MS and push things further, but they seem content with only what's offers the most immediate investor return. My point is, I have a long history and a lot of experience with all 3 vendors. Which company offers the best value changes over time. Currently it's MS, and both Sony and Nintendo are choosing minimalism. That inevitably will change at some point in the future as it always does.

Im not starting console war arguments or using fanboy nonsense to back my opinion. Phil Spencer said in an interview that xbox needed to regain gamers trust, which is true, they do. I've been listening to see how its been going and if xbox can even regain my trust. The sweet PR talk isnt the way to do it but fans seem to think it does, thas why I brought up what xbox fans were saying.

Obviously rather its fanboy talk or not, corporations pay attention to what people are sayin online. Thats how they knew they f'd up with the xone b4 people even bought it. Someone just needs to tell Phil to calm the arrogance b4 he gets Don Mattrick'd.

I had a PS1, got OG xbox over PS2 because it had better graphics, but RROD and the shamefully outdated tech turned me away from the360 and swayed me to purchase PS3, MS practically stopped making games with the xone so i bought PS4 and now they seem to just be all over the place with cloud gaming and still not delivering any games so its PS5. I had my experiences with xbox and Im always watching closely to consider buying again but right now as a whole I feel the brand its terrible. They dont seem to have a clear direction in gaming. Add that to the list of things in my other comment and thats why I feel xbox is a terrible brand with no real reason to invest into their ecosystem which is somewhat relevant to the topic of this article.

Just hearing the things you were saying about Sony in your other comments made me reply because I think youre looking too deep into these corporations. They all nasty at the end of the day, thats why I dont work for any corporation but the issues Sony may have corporately doesnt affect me as a customer, cant say the same about MS.