Round 1 to Sony which has momentum on its side with a solid launch date for the PS4, a clear upgrade and downgrade path for older, newer, whatever games and consoles and gizmos. And a pretty stellar line up of launch titles. Meanwhile, Microsoft kind of is there, but kind of isn’t firm enough with its intentions. But MS did talk up its stellar launch titles at Gamescon 2013. It’s all about the game. So, we won’t hate on the playahs.
Yet, it must be said, that there is nothing better than being down on Microsoft. They are kind of easy to beat up these days.
They should have really let fly with the Xbox One launch. They did screw up the initial PR, particularly with some very unfriendly user features that they had to walk back.
Meanwhile Sony, which is not in that great a shape either as a company, seems to have a pretty fair amount of gamer commitment to its platform. It also helps that they are firm on a launch date and seem to be running ahead of Microsoft on the schedule.
Ultimately, it’s unlikely that we will see a dramatic surge in either platforms fortune come Christmas 2013 because, I am pretty sure most people will wait to see how each platform fares with the early adopters and enthusiasts. There isn’t anything that is a must have at launch with either platform. And, we are not fully out of our major economic recessionary period so, people are going to hold on to their money.
The guys over at Gamasutra are bullish:
The company’s press conference was an extension of what we’ve seen before, amped up: We are a platform for gamers, they said. We deliver what consumers want. We have no clear strategy for the Vita, but we’ll keep throwing ideas at it and hope that it sticks (the price drop can help). And finally, we know what we’re doing with our next-gen launch when the competition obviously does not.
It’s hard to say if any of the moves the company made at the conference are significant because they’re so much the same as what it was doing at E3. But that may be enough: The response from the enthusiast press gathered at the conference was just as rapturous as it was then.
Maybe everyone will be buying gold phones. Hmmm.
