A reader identifies five areas where Sony could end up losing out to Microsoft in the next gen, including price and exclusivity deals.
We’re now no more than three months away from the launch of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 and we still know very little about either console, including such basic things as price and release date. Clearly Sony is still the easy favourite but there’s one thing that could beat them: themselves. Sony arrogance isn’t a meme for nothing, it’s real and I’ve tried to come up with a list of five ways I think it could end up ruining their own plans.
1. Abuse of exclusivity
You’ve already seen this start to happen with the Spider-Man in Avengers deal and now there’s rumours that Sony has signed up whole major games as timed exclusives. I’m not suggesting that anyone is going to cancel their PlayStation 5 pre-order (if such things existed) because it’s got timed exclusive games but if they do enough of them, with big enough games, then you’ll soon start to see the mood change. After all, Microsoft got tons of backlash for their Rise Of The Tomb Raider deal – a game no one cared about on a console that was already well behind in sales.
If Sony makes, to use two random examples, Call Of Duty or the new Batman timed exclusives that is going to cause nothing but bad blood and probably tit-for-tat exclusive deals from Microsoft, that everyone is going to blame Sony for. Yes, the PlayStation 5 will have extra exclusive games, for a while, but the amount of negativity generated will only damage Sony’s position, not improve it.
2. Ass-backwards compatibility
Not only do many of my points boil down to good old-fashioned Sony arrogance but also the likelihood that they’ll acknowledge problems but only offer a half-hearted response to them. That already seems to be the case with backwards compatibility. All they’ve talked about so far is the top 100 PlayStation 4 games and nothing about whether they’ll be improved or anything about previous generations.
Compared to Xbox backwards compatibility it’s miles behind and Microsoft has done an impressive job to turn a feature that nobody used to care about into a major weapon in the console wars, one which Sony shows no sign of being able to counter.
3. PlayStation Minus
This is a similar problem to backwards compatibility, except it’s not exactly clear what Microsoft is up to with regards to Xbox Live Gold and free online. They’re clearly planning something and while they have said Xbox Live Gold isn’t being discontinued they haven’t said it won’t be free. Most likely it’ll be combined with their other services into one big subscription, so that it’s much less obvious you’re still paying to play online.
There’s been no sign Sony is looking to change anything about PSN (unlike Xbox Live Gold you can still buy 12 month subscriptions) and that is going to give a huge advantage to Microsoft if they can claim online is free or just generally a better deal. Especially if they can then point to the fact that they’re changing things up, trying to offer more value for money, but Sony is just sitting there and refusing to change.
4. Aspirational pricing
Video game companies (probably most large companies, to be honest) rarely seem to learn from their mistakes so while you’d think Sony would remember what damage the PlayStation 3’s high price did to them I wouldn’t bet on it. The PlayStation 5 is clearly not going to be cheap – hyper fast SSDs do not grow on trees – and the fact that there’s already a Digital Edition of the console shows they realise that price is a factor.
But if the PlayStation 5 is £450 or more you’re starting to get into the sort of silly territory that most people, given everything that’s happened this year, are not even going to consider. This will be a problem for Microsoft as well, but you get the impression they are much more aware of the problem than Sony, with talk of multiple different models of console, not just two. They also have Game Pass to provide a value for money argument, which brings me to point five…
5. Passing on PlayStation Now
Forget Halo Infinite, Games Pass is Microsoft’s killer app and they know it. In my opinion it’s more important than what either console can do or any of their launch games. The problem for Microsoft is it’s an incredibly easy thing to copy. There’s no tech involved, just deep pockets – which admittedly Microsoft has more than Sony. But Sony wouldn’t have to have as good a third person line-up if it did a PlayStation Game Pass, they’d just have their own first party games, which are miles better than Microsoft’s are ever likely to be.
But will they? I just can’t see it. They’re too stuck in their ways and don’t want to admit Microsoft has a good idea or give away their crown jewels for ‘free’. What they’ll do is some half-hearted copy with a million caveats that will only underline that Game Pass is a much better deal. And that’s if they do anything at all.
But Sony has to realise that the game has changed. They were the ones to start this next gen console war, by announcing the PlayStation 5, but they’ve got to understand that the rules are no longer the same and just because they’re the frontrunner doesn’t mean they can expect an easy win.
By reader Vigo
This Reader’s Feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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