Why PlayStation and Xbox are no longer about the station or the box

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They used to call it “Wars of the Control Unit,” And he went to the spoils. When PlayStation and PlayStation 2 dominated Sega, Nintendo and Microsoft, you sell more than a hundred million boxes in our living rooms – all! – They created a profitable virtuous cycle. It means more keyboards selling more games, which means attracting more developers more Games, which means signs of large dollar for Sony.

But to get the signs of the dollar this yarn and preserve it, the Cons differential manufacturers are saturated with wheels. The wars of the control unit initially fought with exclusive games, which led to the purchase of the only system that could play Final Fantasy ViiOr Super Mario 64Or Halo.

Later, the “wars” also recruited your friends. Microsoft has transformed tables in 2005 with Xbox 360, which made both local players and online care easier than PlayStation, only in time only for online games explosion and four -playing sofa addresses. Were you really buying the “wrong” console and losing games with your friends? What if they insisted on PlayStation? Internet forums in the world erupted in a discussion about the advantages of each brand and technical capabilities for each control unit.

But something funny happened after Sony PlayStation 3, the most powerful devices so far. Devs Angry made it known that the strange cell structure in Sony was very difficult and annoying to develop the game. The founder of the Valve Cofetens Gabe Newell called it “a waste of time.”

The manufacturer of the game control unit did not want to risk repeating the error. By 2012, Sony and Microsoft chose the AMD X86 chips for its next devices, giving them the same architecture as Windows PCS, and they never looked back. Besides the appearance of multilateral game engines such as Unreal and UNITY, it has become easier for developers to bring their games to more platforms simultaneously.

The console wars have ended for a long time. Certainly, Nintendo Nintendo still and you will need a key to playing the pioneer Mario or PokemonBut most games arrive and allow you to play with friends in your console, as long as you can withstand the control unit costs at all. The price of Xboxes, PlayStations and current switches are all increasing now after they are no longer competing: Xbox X will soon cost $ 150 more than last year.

But in the program sharing program, even Sony, which hindered multi -platform players (also known as Crossplay) for years as PS4 outperformed Xbox One, seriously.

This month, Sony published the first PlayStation game on Xbox, Heldivers 2And it became the best -selling game on the Microsoft platform. Xbox games topped Sony PlayStation Preormer in March! Is hell ended? No – Sony and Microsoft realized that it would be more profitable to sell games as possible as possible, instead of making you buy a specific box.

Do not take my words to this: “In games work, we move away from a more focused business model for the more to the work platform to expand society and increase participation,” Sony Svp Sadahiko Hayakawa told August. It is the most concrete statement of a changing industry so far-last May, the company was still proposing to use one big player address to push you to buy PlayStation.

But even when the games are still “exclusive”, they are often just a “time control unit” these days. Although this is less healthy in Sony, many games appear on the computer on the same day that you come to PlayStation or Xbox, in addition to his competitors after months. until Final Fantasy ViiOnce it is a fatal application for the original Sony PlayStation, finally a fair game: the new version will reach Xbox and Nintendo Switch 2 on January 22, 2026, after years of PS4 and PS5 versions.

At the same time, the selected console in Microsoft is exclusive Indiana Jones and the Great Circle It took only four months to hit the PS5, and launched it Gears Remaster on PlayStation, Xbox and PC on the same day in August, making one of her most famous games to compete. Heck, there is even a Halo Cross in PlayStation published Heldivers 2One you can play on PS5.

For Microsoft, it can be said that these moves are necessary. It seems that the Microsoft strategy “Each screen is Xbox devices” rooted in the fact that the material Xboxes is not only selling as well as the planned company, and as a result, the Xbox Game is not passed, a subscription service company that collects downloadable games and broadcast games that you can play via Xbox and PC, and even your phone. But as Sony realized that it can print the money by bringing their PlayStation games to the computer now, it is very easy, so Microsoft also believes that it can occupy Xbox sales by placing these games on PlayStation.

If you take this idea to its logical end and make the box unnecessary, what does these brands already represent? What does xbox do Intended Without the box? What does PlayStation mean without the station?

We are not completely You need to answer this question, because the box will not disappear. Most people do not want to think about it how They will play a game. They just want to buy the latest thing in the store, connect it, run. Although impressive cloud games services, there is still a lot of friction that replaces keyboards with the way NETFLIX has replaced and friends with DVD tablets. There is a lot of money on the table for Sony, or even Microsoft, to risk leaving all stores to compete.

Microsoft has already confirmed that she is building Xbox from the next generation, as she annoyed “the largest artistic jump you have seen in generating devices”, and mill Mill may already assume PS6 specifications.

But over the past 12 years, most people have not realized that Xbox and PlayStation have become the same thing – the AMD computer that punches its weight, with an improved fast interface for the living room games. Their industries can reach dozens of players, up to hundreds of other millions if they embrace them and sell games to the ecosystem for the entire personal computer, including each other.

It is the facades and games that placed X in Xbox and playing in PlayStation, not what is under the cover of the box. So it may be time for Sony and Microsoft to complete the shift from the console to the PC and harvest the rewards.

One of the beautiful things about computer games is that Scales. I can play the same game on the Bukhari deck that I play on the desktop for high games, as long as I am ready to settle for the weakest graphics while moving. Or I can play a 15 -year -old computer game on either of them.

Sony and Microsoft has each square fingers in this water: You can play some PS4 games on the PS4 Pro, PS5, or PS5 Pro, and each has different levels of performance and graphic sincerity, as long as developers offer a game for the game. The same applies to Xbox: with Xbox One, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X, the most powerful control devices can sometimes play old games.

But simply launch a new console, followed by a few years after a more powerful version of the control unit with limited improvements to old games, does not approach the way you can perform computer games better and better on every new generation of devices and even refine to the degree of mode. It does not maintain contracts from Pre-X86 toys to play.

For this reason, it seems as if the following Xbox may be literally a series of computers, Windows operating and playing Windows games, designed by Microsoft’s Partners. By making the Xbox future computer games, including the old Xbox headlines saved for the PC, Microsoft can focus to be a game publisher, operating system seller, and the cloud supply rather than building leading devices in the loss as well. (Microsoft admitted in 2021 that it sells devices at a loss, and sometimes Sony has sometimes.)

There is evidence that microsoft may go this way. In one month, the company will participate in the launch of Xbox Ally X with ASUS, which is a laptop with Xbox interface that can even appear steam games alongside your Microsoft. Court documents show that Microsoft was planning to flow Windows games, not just Xbox games, via their XCloud Cloud games as well. The efforts made to build the Xbox games team, perhaps to give the control unit games a new future for the personal computer.

And if the goal is to sell games instead of keyboards, then why do Microsoft Studios create XBOX games to start? I expect they are working on computer games that support games games that can be played on both the “Xbox” computers from the next generation and regular computers, with no transfer at all.

It is not currently clear in the Sony camp, but I will be surprised if PlayStation is not in the same way. In 2022, the company revealed that it wants to be half of its games on a personal computer or mobile phone by 2025, which greatly reduces the participation of the console, and many games are sold on the computer as a result. It also just released the power saving mode that looks designed to make low PlayStation games like computer games.

Although the PS5 Pro can better play some PS4 games, they do not always work in the other direction: completely new games designed for the latest control unit in general that will not work on weaker devices. But rumors are, that in the future, PlayStation Handheld will play PS5 games while moving, and Power Saver’s mode may be the ideal way to help them.

Sony and Microsoft may stop turning the console into a computer. They may not be ready to give up the crown jewels in their gaming wallets so far. They may only pay lip service for another round of keyboards: Remember when Sony described PS2, and when Microsoft has technically under the Xbox One cover?

But none of the companies necessarily see its future in a box. They see their future in the games themselves, and games that can sell many places more than they are currently doing.

The box will remain the tip of the spear, but it is no longer the point.