Thats the thing with MS. They have found a clever way to eliminate the competition's ability to advertise the PS brand as the most powerful console and the best place to play.
This is the main purpose of the XB1X.
This is why I believe they are targeting two SKU's for next gen. The normal one and the high end one. The normal one can be released soonish for a quick market share take over, while the high end, although will be more expensive, it might be able to compete against the more powerful PS5 at a normal attractive price once it is also released. The less powerful unit could be very cheap by then and sell like crazy during the holiday season when the new PS5 will arrive
I think Phil and MS felt it was very important to seize back the title crown, they talk about it a lot in their overall strategy. I recall one of the Sony executives saying that the were blown away by initial PS4 launch year and they went into analytics to figure it out, and they did, but they didn't want to reveal what took them there.
I can only assume it was power + DF that really bolstered them above and beyond expectations.
As we saw MS copy and paste that strategy as soon as X1X launched.
Though as we are agreeable with each other here on this forum, I think we've come to the conclusion that for most of us, power isn't everything. And there's a lot of agreement around just playing games because at the end of the day we just want to play the games we want.
And posters across neo-era, elsewhere and here have largely used that line of reasoning and the fact that Xbox isn't outselling PS4 as proof that power isn't everything. And to some aspect I agree; however, there is a time for viral (at the beginning) and it's much too late for a reverse viral trend, Sony hit critical mass so quickly that once you hit that, people will choose platforms just because of their social relationships. If we re-launched today as the ecosystem features stand, I suspect Sony wouldn't be enjoying the lead that they have.
The real advantage is that every single multiplatform title that is released is free positive press when you are the power leader. BC and enhanced BC being always dissected by DF also is free positive press. And then Games for Gold has their 2 BC + 2 Xbox Titles for positive Press. And now Gamepass games each month being introduced is positive press. So it quickly became a positive press cycle each month for Xbox because of new and old games being brought to the forefront by DF and other sites looking to cash in on that. This seems to be working out for them if you just look at Xbox in isolation and see the YoY numbers. Earlier in the generation a majority of posters predicted some things that came true and other things that failed to come true. What did come true was the lack of available power on XBO1S. It's now definitely 720p machine. What didn't come true was Xbox being outright dominated to the point of business exit.
Following, Sony won on the generation reset. A little bit like how MS rode the reset the previous generation (really failed to finish though). A bit like watching opening moves in a chess game. Beginning the game with large opening blunders and the rest of the game just plays out with no way out 'usually'. Thinking about that, curious to see how next generation will play out as this generation reset will be softer with libraries moving forward. Multiplayer games that dominated the generation won't get 'wiped' out because of population loss. And that's a big deal I think for Sony to not reset. You can't kill your important GaaS title populations as it's going to be a detrimental strategy moving forward and I'm sure MS has had this in mind ever since they got their asses whoops this generation. I mean, they had such a stronghold on Call of Duty, the generation reset killed off that population and they had so much hubris to believe that everyone would just purchase the next CoD on Xbox "because". Hard to imagine the outlook on the sole company that decides not to do BC and forces a reset on their Fortnite, Destiny, Warframe, CoD/BF, Minecraft, and GTAV populations? MS must have taken a deep look at why they failed and saw the obvious population declines as soon as next generation rolls on. The fact that Sony is now the marketing leader for many of MS' 3P marketing deals of last gen speaks volumes. And like how history plays out, Sony got back into the game building up their 1P library and we see MS making similar motions, funny how history tends to move in cycles.
They'll try to wrap up the generation ideally with some output from their exclusives 1P and if possible have some output from those new studios purchased. I think from a sales perspective, at least i think MS will finish strong because their population has some form of guarantee their library is going to move forward regardless of what X2 will do; they won't feel pressured to wait for next gen. They'll purchase hardware at the end of this generation cheap, and then wait for sales on next gen to buy at a price point that is affordable for them.
Playstation is very much still going to have a very strong draw with their exclusive lineup and will end their generation with a strong set of exclusives building into their next gen. The strategy has worked out very well for them, they can't do anything more with this generation with next gen being so close so their plan is really to make sure all those features that their customer base wants happens in next gen. They continue to sell more than Xbox even though their YoY numbers are down from time to time so there's that which really speaks to the strength of the brand.
I suspect at this time, if we're to determine whose 'winning', if that really matters, it's probably the number of paying/active subscriptions on each platform - assuming we are having problems figuring out the hardware splits.
