A reader is not happy about the idea of a next gen Xbox or the assumption that Sony will want to counter it with the PlayStation 6.
Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 is out this week, which means that by next week we’ll be drowning in cherry-picked stats about how much it’s helped Xbox Game Pass and then we’ll go through another loop of ‘actually Xbox isn’t dead, it’s never been healthier’. Being a game fan has been exhausting these last two years, with both Xbox and PlayStation experiencing absolute career lows in terms of the quality and volume of their games, and any pretence of basic competence.
The only difference is that throughout it all Sony has kept stoney silent, so we have no idea what they’re trying to do, and Microsoft has never stopped talking. Except Microsoft says a completely different thing every time they open their mouth, so… we have no idea what they’re trying to do either.
Well, actually, that’s not quite true. We do know that they have a new next gen Xbox on the way, which will have ‘the biggest technological leap ever in a generation.’ Which is either an obvious lie or Microsoft has mastered cold fusion. I know which I’m betting on.
Ignoring the unlikely sounding claims about its power, the fact remains that Microsoft has announced their next console, even though their current one is less than three years old. Which tells you all you need to know about how that one sold.
They haven’t said when the next console will come out, but it seems very unlikely to me that they’d announce it and not have it launch within at least two years of that announcement. Otherwise, it just becomes vapourware. Also, if Xbox Series X/S sales are tanking they need a replacement as soon as possible.
2026 has been talked about as a target date by many and that’s two years, so I guess that makes sense. But the thing is, if Xbox’s going to release their new console then, you can bet Sony aren’t going to be too far behind.
The only time Xbox beat (at least for a while) PlayStation was with the Xbox 360, when it got a full year’s head start on the PlayStation 3. Sony never forgot that and ever since has made sure that Microsoft does not get a jump on them again. They are not going to suddenly break that rule and that means that the PlayStation 6 will also come out in 2026 or at least early 2027.
In 2026 the PlayStation 5 will be six years old, which is a year less than the gap between the PlayStation 4 and 5. But because of the pandemic, and the last two years, the gap seems at least two years shorter and it’s clear that most gamers consider this generation to have barely begun.
You only have to look at the miniscule number of Xbox Series X-only and PlayStation 5-only first party exclusives to see how little has actually happened this gen, and how developers cannot possibly have pushed either console to its maximum.
But because console sales are going down that apparently means we have to have a new generation. Even though the reason they’re going to down is because of the lack of the games, which could’ve easily been fixed if… well, I’m not getting into all that. But let’s just say if both companies weren’t run by short-sighted idiots who apparently have forgotten everything about the industry they ever knew.
I know I’m not the first person to say this but it’s madness. It’s madness on just a basic business level, let alone anything else, and how this shambles of a generation has been allowed to hobble along like this, like some mindless zombie that has no idea what it’s doing beyond putting one foot in front of another, is a mystery to me.
Two years from today and we’ll almost certainly be just days away from the release of the next gen Xbox and PlayStation 6, complaining that all their games are just remasters of PlayStation 5 games. I am not ready for that dance again so soon. I don’t think anyone is.