The November 10 last year Microsoft put the new Xbox family machines on sale; Xbox Series X y Series S, which were released at a price of € 499 and € 299 respectively. Nine days later on the 19th of the same month, it would arrive on European lands PS5. Sony’s machine also landed in two versions, but preserving architecture and opting for a cheaper version € 100 without a Blu-Ray reader, the starting price of the machine was also € 499. This is how the new generation started, one that was preceded by somewhat chaotic planning by the two companies., which was affected by a situation as exceptional as the pandemic that we are still experiencing, and which spared no effort when it came to selling us the motorcycle of the “future of videogames”.
Both Sony and Microsoft meticulously dosed the information and their speech, letting go of certain promises that, as usual in the launch of a new game console, were not always fulfilled. Now, once the first half year of life of the present generation has passed, It is time to assess how the beginning of the life cycle of these new consoles has been.
The future of videogames
The The 2019 Game Awards kicked off to the race that has taken us up to the present moment, showing two things, Microsoft’s rush to position itself in front of the public with a clear philosophy, the positive inertia generated by the arrival of Phil Spencer, and the increasingly marked loss of relevance of E3. Thus, the event organized by Geoff Keighley housed the Xbox Series X presentation and announcement of the first major game in development by an internal study of the American company; Hellblade 2. Meanwhile Sony was still silent.
The technical specifications of the new Xbox amazed everyone and, perhaps, the emphaticness of their numbers made Sony consider the need to explain, in great detail, the architecture of their new machine. There Mark Cerny appeared, starring “Road to PlayStation 5″, a presentation that delighted hardware lovers, but was somewhat heavy for the common man.
The machines were already beginning to take shape, so it was the turn of video games, and there the idea of the future began to be sold. The result? We ran into a washed-out summer, full of events that promised to change our perspective, but that, in the end, they did not come to revolutionize anything either. Was it a problem of expectations? Was the bubble of the new generation inflated too much? Have we really reached that future of the video game?
The generational jump according to Xbox Series X
After the fiasco of Misguided speech Don Mattrick made at the Xbox One presentation back in 2013, Phil Spencer seemed clear about the direction Microsoft should take. Of the famous “tv, tv, sports, sports“, we have moved to a scenario that could be coined as “videogame, videogame“but that has been dubbed Xbox Game Pass. It may seem that this is not the subject to be discussed right now, but it is that the subscription service is the true protagonist of that “future of videogames” to which they alluded.
Aware of the importance that internal studies have had in the future of the commercial life of PlayStation 4, Microsoft has not hesitated to pull the portfolio to bring together internal studies. The icing on the cake was with the purchase of ZeniMax, which allowed him to take over Bethesda, which in turn includes names like ID Software or Arkane Studios, there is nothing. Of course, this pace of acquisitions has led many of us (including a server) to constantly expect Microsoft to hit the table when it comes to exclusive titles. But things in the palace go slow, and the conglomerate that Phil Spencer has set up needs time to start to bear fruit. Logical and normal, but that leaves a scenario that could seem somewhat sad for anyone who has done with a brand new Xbox Series X and hope, for example, to be able to enjoy the expected Halo Infinite launch.
The delay of the mythical saga hurt, of course, but Miyamoto already said it, “A late game can be a good game, but a game thrown in a hurry will always be a bad game.”. From then until now, the most prominent title given to us by the exclusive production (or semi, if we take into account the PC market), of the Xbox brand, has been The Medium. It is true that we haven’t found anything like Rise: Son of Rome, a type of production that is mainly directed to dazzle visually and make evident evolution with respect to the previous generation. Is Xbox Series X missing that? Yes, are we therefore facing a beginning of a generation worse than that experienced with Xbox One? I think not.
Faced with the impossibility of facing Sony in hardware sales or in the (current) production of exclusive video games, Phil Spencer bet everything on the paradigm shift, to the industry revolution, to Xbox Game Pass, a service without which it is not understood (or is not equally understood) the existence of both Xbox Series X and, especially, that of Series S. It cannot be denied that the two machines are orphaned of exclusive productions. But the existence of the subscription service and the incredible work done by the company in the field of backward compatibility, represent a revolution in the way of approaching the entry into a new generation. In a way, Xbox Series X and Game Pass have led us to a future of the video game in which the greatest advance consists in presenting the best way we have ever had of looking at the past. Not bad, and even less knowing that, in addition, there is a lot of new game on the way.
The generational jump according to PS5
Sony adopted a position diametrically opposed to that of its rival company. If something works, why touch it? Therefore, far from trying to compete with a powerful new service that could look Xbox Game Pass in the face, since PlayStation it was opted for emphasize the exclusive production of video games that has added value to their hardware, leaving services like PlayStation Now in the background. On the contrary, it has put a little more affection in PlayStation Plus, preparing a welcome package with 20 titles that take advantage of the backward compatibility with PS4, and including several launch titles such as Bugsnax, Destruction AllStars o Maquette.
But the movement that showed, more clearly, how far Sony is from the discourse of its competitor, was the announcement of the price increase of PS5 video games, which now have a RRP of € 79 which, sthorn Jim Ryan, is justified by the quality that the productions of PlayStation Studios. Something that, in addition, it was announced in the clumsiest way possible at the PS5 launch event. Thus, the negative side of these first months with the Sony console is clear, although this could be added to the issue of delays. But given the current context, these delays seem understandable to me.
On the other hand, Sony has put the emphasis on exclusive titles, so it’s time to talk about them. Looking back, if we look at the PlayStation 4 launch catalog, we come across names like DriveClub (a great game that featured a disastrous launch), Killzone Shadow Fall (one of the worst installments of the franchise) and Knack (the demonstration that Mark Cerny performs better with hardware than with software). Yes, we also have titles such as Resogun or Flower, works that have endured in the memory of those of us who took the glove at the time, but which are not what we usually ask of a generational leap.
What we usually demand are proposals that show a certain muscle without neglecting quality and, in that sense, I believe that something like Demon’s Souls supersedes the triad of exclusives that was proposed to us at the end of 2013. But it is that the remake of Bluepoint Games has been accompanied by Sackboy: A Big Adventure (a very remarkable platform game), Spider-Man Miles Morales (a true blockbuster that shows the good work of Insomniac) and Astro’s Playroom, a demo designed for us to experience the benefits of DualSense, which has turned out to be the best rigs that Sony in-house studios have given us in a long time. Also, we just received Returnal and we are at the gates of Ratchet & Clank: A Dimension Apart.
I am aware that the existence of transgenerational video games dilutes the feeling of generational leap. But I also think that, the forced exclusivity of those titles (the one that occurs when, given the possibility of doing so, it does not scale down technically) it is an artificial way of adding value to the new machine. On this occasion, Sony has not fallen for that (even if it is to try to scratch more sales), on the contrary, it has managed to add value to PS5 through exclusive quality software and even with certain bets that can be classified as risky (ni Demon’s Souls ni Returnal are authentic are comparable to a release like the one in Spider-Man Miles Morales).
Conclusions.
It is true that not all the promises that were made have been keptIt is also true that, regarding communication, the journey has been quite tortuous, with characters such as Jim Ryan (that every time he speaks he throws some more mud at his own company), or maneuvers like that of Halo Infinite, which left Xbox Series X without its star launch title.
On the other hand, we are at a technical point where it becomes difficult to hit the table merely visually. The extra power requires exponential efforts in the field of production, continuously making developments more expensive and making it necessary to wait for teams to start taking advantage of new tools (and there Unreal Engine 5 will have a lot to say in a couple of years). But in general terms, I think we are faced with one of the best generation starts we’ve had in the industry.
We have an endless offer, which, as well as presenting new titles, also allows us to look at the past (something we always fill our mouths with) in the most comfortable way that has existed until now. The brand Xbox offers the cheapest way to access an immense catalog of video games without giving up certain quality standards in remediation. While, PS5 has a much more solid catalog than the PlayStation 4 had at this point, to which we must add a backward compatibility that works wonderfully and that gives access to the best string of own production that Sony has generated.
Yes, there are many things to improve, but in my opinion, the present generation has gotten off to a better start than the previous one. We have at our disposal better services, more powerful consoles for their time, stronger catalogs and even better controls. There will always be reasons to frown, but I think generally speaking (and not forgetting the bad news), we can be satisfied with the start of this new stage. I, at least, am, and you?
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