Now that the prices for the PS5 and Xbox Series X | S have been announced, we have officially entered the era of real struggle to dominate the market in the ninth generation of home devices. And after we discussed with you a previous article about the criteria for each player’s selection of the appropriate device for him according to his circumstances and preferences, there are some things that we must shed light on related to positive and negative points for each company that may be the features of the competition in the next generation and may determine who is the winner in the end between Sony and Microsoft.
Sony has loyal gamers and exclusive games :
The successful launch of any new generation depends on several factors, including the price, of course, but not everything. An important and strong factor is the intensity of brand loyalty, which the higher the brand, the more players go to buy the preferred device, whatever the competitor’s advantages. Sony excels in this aspect, and there was a study saying that the PlayStation fans are the most loyal to their favorite brand, because by virtue of its precedence in the industry it has built a wide fan base of people who grew up playing on PS1, so that if you say to someone, “Name me a home game console”, he will respond and say, “PlayStation “And it is distinguished from its competitors in that it is well aware of what attracts its audience and offers them the kind of games that they have become accustomed to since past generations and does not care about the changes in the industry and trends for the online because its fans have a special taste that differs from the online audience truly, and with continuing to provide what they want and expect the audience has maintained the loyalty of their fans Which they have acquired since the 1990s. It only relapsed with the PlayStation 3 due to other factors that are not included in the games, such as the launch of the device after the competitor Xbox 360 a year and at a higher price and with a processor that made the development process difficult on the device and ironically, Sony’s exclusivity enabled it to rise again at the end of the seventh generation.
So let’s not forget the gaming factor, even if the PlayStation 5 is not armed with an arsenal of launch games – your comprehensive guide to the launch games of the two devices – but it has so far beat the opponent at least there is Miles Morales and Remic Damon Souls and basically has a legacy of successful and popular games which is enough to guarantee The player says he will get new parts from it, as happened with the upcoming Qad of War and Horizon games in 2021, meaning that the Playstation player can choose the device and he is confident that he will have great games throughout the coming years and most importantly, they suit his taste. Whereas, Microsoft is the one who suffers mainly and since this generation from the lack of games and the provision of them via the computer, and it was not lacking in disappointment that the only first-party game was postponed recently and relied on old games with pre-compatibility service. Will anyone buy a new generation device to play previous games? Despite the presence of all these acquired studios, so far, we have seen nothing of them except for teaser clips that only last for seconds. There is a fear that it will be dependent on the Internet, services, for example, or all games, without diversification.
Dualsense controller upgrades
Sony and then a lot of developers talked at length about the new features in the control hand that give us a greater immersion in the game world while developing haptic feedback technologies that enable developers to customize the level of vibration produced by the hand; It immerses players further in the experience through touch. Besides, Adaptive Triggers feature that will make you feel the power of your actions like the feeling you get when you pull an arrow string to throw a bow.
The hand has become larger and more comfortable when using it, and the built-in rechargeable battery has a larger capacity than the PlayStation 4 hand, and it does not bother with it to exchange batteries as with the Xbox. Among the uses of its technology in games, we mention, for example, that the Deathloop game will disable the DualSense hand buttons if your weapon is damaged! It can also generate sensory impulses from the sounds of the game automatically, which means that its features can now be supported by games with minimal effort from the developer and will not be neglected advantages as happened with the techniques of the hands of Dual Shock 4 and in the game Godfall will give us a realistic feeling when the weapons are combined.
Sony made the cheapest device?
With the Xbox Series S at a price of $ 300, you may be surprised by the above question. But there are actually those who say that Sony, with its digital device at $ 400, is the one who provided the best price for next-generation devices, because basically the Digital Playstation beats the specifications over the Xbox Series S, whether the power of the graphics processor or the capacity and speed of the storage unit. It is a device that represents the complete real shift for the next generation. As for the Series S, it is considered a half-shift between the eighth and ninth generation, as it is limited in strength and targets only 1080P as a precision, and its fate is unclear in the future after the developers ’statements and their concerns about it. If some people want to invest in one device in the long term, then the Digital PlayStation 5 is really the best option because it will support higher resolution and better graphic options without sacrifices or fear of bottlenecks over the next seven years, perhaps, and it comes with saving $ 100 over the regular PlayStation 5 and Xbox consoles. Series X, so it may be Sony’s winning horse, which the company is now forced to sell with a financial loss in the hope of compensating it with gains from selling digital games and limiting that through its store, as well as from third-party games fees, where it takes 30% of the companies. In short, it represents a full-featured, new generation device without sacrifices, at a price of only $ 400, that is, the launch price of the PlayStation 4 7 years ago, so that you do not find yourself needing to buy a new platform in the middle of the life cycle of future devices (in case you chose it instead of the Series S).
Save at Microsoft
It is true that I said above that the PlayStation 4 digital device may be the cheapest in the next generation, but there is an important thing that the PlayStation fans should pay attention to is that they will pay the price of games in the next generation of $ 70, and unfortunately it does not depend on the games only, for example the new controller has an official price of 70 A dollar and this price is 10 dollars more than the DualShock 4 arm. In return, Microsoft tells you that through the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate service, you can experience many games, including Microsoft, EA and Bethesda games, after acquiring them from the first day of launching them for a subscription of only $ 15 per month.
Microsoft is tending to provide the most economical and saving option for the player who is looking for playing at the most cost-effective way, but Xbox has become his ideal destination, whether by buying a device that has the advantages of the new generation and at the same time inexpensively with a sacrifice of accuracy only, which is the Xbox Series S, or in terms of the cost of games, especially after it raised Sony games prices for $ 70, and here we find that the gamepass is more valuable than this generation, with the games of 3 huge companies available at the time of its release to subscribers – this is in no case Microsoft did not surprise us with changes and raise the prices of the service of course in the future – because the PlayStation 5 games began to cost players a larger amount, for example. Godfall is available on the PlayStation 5 for $ 70, while it is available on the Epic Store for $ 40, currently for pre-order, and this is a really big difference. So imagine that the remaster of GTA V will cost you $ 75 on the PlayStation 5 !! And at the price of games, Microsoft gives the player cheaper prices by supporting local currencies with the ability to change the Region so that you get the game in a cheap currency, while we find that Sony games prices exceed in our stores even the official price of $ 70.
Microsoft’s most powerful home gaming device
Yes, that’s right, Xbox Series X is a technical beast par excellence that has the most powerful processor with 12 teraflops along with Microsoft’s advanced technologies, whether Direct ML technology to improve performance or device spirit, with a Velocity Architecture architecture that will allow developers to access 100 GB of game assets instantly. Or Dynamic Latency Input to reduce latency. Microsoft literally did not hide anything from us in this aspect and completely slapped its device to show us everything around it, on the other hand, we have not yet seen an explanation from Sony about the cooling technology adopted by its device! Nor is it any technology that the device adopts except that it is faster than its competitor with the SSD unit.
Microsoft Money
Microsoft is one of the largest companies by market value. It is a trillion dollar company that surpasses that and has a lot of financial capabilities that open up opportunities for it to do a lot and offer surprises. This ability may have enabled it to provide a device with strong specifications at an attractive price, and if we wanted to assemble a computer with similar specifications, we would need almost double its price. Rather, she can absorb the loss by offering a device at a competitive price, and we should perhaps thank her because she forced Sony to catch up with her, perhaps offering a competitive price with her devices.
Also, that money is considered a weapon in its possession that enabled it to acquire many studios, so it moved from five internal development teams to 23 teams currently working under the Xbox Studios umbrella. The biggest deal was its acquisition of the entire third-party company, Bethesda, and owning its addresses to include it as a gamepass service and give it more momentum to the next generation.
We demanded and criticized her a lot because of the lack of games and she moved to really fix this problem and paid billions for it. Ironically, the value of Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda is roughly equivalent to Sony’s profits for the period from 2013 to 2019, which amounted to $ 8.8 billion. Through such deals, Microsoft cuts a lot on itself. Instead of going through the trouble of creating teams from the start and developing titles from scratch, it buys established studios, ready with its employees and creators, and owns addresses that have their own audience as well. More importantly, will we see them use their money to ensure the launch of third-party games via gamepass from day one as well? So we saw, for example, how the developer of Cyberbank 2077 rushed to deny that his game would be released via gym pass, and according to Bloomberg analyst Matthew Kanterman, it may not be released on service until 2022 or even later.
last word
What Microsoft lacks and what money cannot achieve and buy is creativity and the ability to present entirely new titles, unlike Sony, which is distinguished in this aspect. In this generation alone, it was presented to us by Bloodborne, Des Jone, Horizon Zero Dawn and the ghost of Tsushima, and it was not satisfied with its famous series of games. And guess what? Bethesda was one of the companies that was famous for its story titles and provided a lot in this field until it launched a campaign called Save the Story Games before the winds of change blew it up and forced to keep up with the fashion online, but faced failure with its first attempt with Full Out 76 and now it has a promising title, Death Loop. And with joining Microsoft and presenting its games on the first day, who will guarantee that it will not turn into service games? Or focus more on online? With Game Pass, do not forget that you do not own the game, but rather you just rent it, and you have no right to sell or exchange it. And you have to wait until the third-party companies are kind to you to release their games through this service at an unknown or specific time.
On the other hand, we can say that Sony is the godfather of the first story games, and the quality of its exclusives forces its audience to buy its device for those games, and before one of the opponents jumps out now and argues with me with comments with a point that exceeds Sony’s exclusives, I will tell him that Spencer himself, the president of Xbox, admitted and acknowledged that the first-party games from Microsoft This generation was weak and the lack of new titles negatively affected so they began to obsess over the development teams. They did not do it out of love by squandering money. Please, dear, do not be more royal than a king.
In addition to the exclusives, Sony has strong relations with Japanese companies and gets exclusives from them as well, so that the Playstation becomes the perfect place for fans of these games, and it gives developers the freedom and resources to achieve their vision and does not care to risk the path of introducing completely new titles as it did with Hideo Kojima regardless of the success of his game or not, but This informs its policy of supporting creativity and providing unique experiences. At the same time, the high price of games may play a negative role against Sony in the next generation, as I mentioned above.
In the short term, things may be going in favor of Sony more, as it seems more willing to provide games in a record time, while Microsoft studios need more time to mature all their projects, but all of these teams inevitably bring to a lot and the issue is only a matter of time. But it also remains necessary to clarify the reality of Microsoft’s future trends and how will Gamepass affect the quality of its games?
As for the long term, the situation will depend on the market conditions and the rule that each of the owners creates. In the event that the size of the Gamepass subscription increases to, for example, 30 or 40 million for Microsoft to enter billions of dollars every year, this will allow the service to develop more and bring bigger games to it on the first day, and who knows, Microsoft’s next step may be to include new third-party subscriptions for its service as it did with EA and my personal belief that Uplay + is the best candidate. The model of selling games may also change, making players less willing to pay a large sum for one game only, but all of this will depend on the spread of 5G and getting rid of the limited data available by the internet provider in each country. If this happens, Microsoft will greatly enhance its position in the market and reduce the gap with its arch competitor significantly.
In the end, no one is afraid or upset about any news that raises the ceiling of competition, because that will give us as players better products and better services that will serve our interests, whether we are PlayStation fans or Xbox fans. The PlayStation 5 owners will definitely get bigger and more exclusive exclusives, and Xbox owners will get higher quality games in the game pass, and this is all due to the intense competition fever between the two companies, just as happened in the price war scenario, so I am sure that had it not been for Microsoft not pricing its device at $ 500, we might have seen a price Higher than that for the PlayStation 5, otherwise, why would not each of them wait for the other, and in the end, the price is one?
