PS5 needs to take advantage of Xbox’s failure before someone else does

A reader worries that a company like Apple or Amazon may attempt to take Xbox’s place in the games industry and advises Sony to up its game.

Gamescom Opening Night Live was pretty good, I think most people would agree. It had a lot of surprises but the biggest one of all was that Microsoft decided to shoot itself in the foot by announcing that Indiana Jones And The Great Circle is coming to PlayStation 5 early next year – making sure nobody will buy an Xbox to play it on this Christmas.

Microsoft has lost it; it feels like they’re not even trying anymore. Someone, presumably the big boss Satya Nadella, has clearly told Xbox it needs to earn that $69 billion it spent on Activision Blizzard back quickly, and that’s caused them to go into panic mode.

Xbox isn’t going anywhere soon but it’s basically just the new name for Activision Blizzard, plus a few more minor developers that I imagine will slowly all get shut down as the months and years go on. As a hardware format they’re dead. Even if Microsoft release a Steam Deck-like portable as their next gen machine it’ll probably still be running Steam, rather than being a standalone Xbox.

But I’m not here to talk about Xbox’s future plans, not least because I’m not sure they even have any proper ones. Instead, I’m worried about what happens next. Nature abhors a vacuum, as they say, and there is no way that the games industry is going to be just PlayStation and Nintendo, especially as they’re both Japanese companies.

American companies are not going to be able to stop themselves from giving it a go and trying to take Xbox’s place. And we all know what that masterplan is going to involve: buying up even more companies until there’s none left.

I would say that Google is the most likely but after the failure of Stadia I’m not sure. Amazon’s Luna doesn’t seem to be going anywhere either. Although the Xbox declining in relevance could give them the confidence to increase their efforts, even though neither really seems to understand the games industry very well.

I’d say Apple was a better bet, if only because their mobile business is so big, although Apple Arcade never really seemed to take off. Acting like a publisher and having its own game developer teams doesn’t seem like the sort of thing they’d normally do though, so it’s far from definite.

None of these possibilities are very appealing and I’m sure there’s plenty of others, all of which would no doubt involve giant American corporations with bully boy tactics. Even a relatively smaller company could easily convince a venture capitalist to give them lots of money to buy their way into the industry and cause even more trouble than Microsoft.

Google Stadia — Time for a comeback? (Google)

I think we can all agree that it’s very unlikely that Nintendo would take that role. It’s just not the way they operate, as they always put their games and their needs above those of other publishers. Which is totally their prerogative but it’s not what the industry needs.

Not that Sony isn’t any less self-centred, but they need other publishers for their own success and Nintendo don’t. But at the moment Sony are not acting like market leaders. They’re not doing any real communication or marketing, they’re not announcing or releasing new games, and they’ve got two new bosses that have never said a word in public.

Phil Spencer and the other Xbox execs are making announcements and talking in public all the time. That’s what you need, I feel, if you want to be the market leader. Of course, most of what Xbox says is nonsense that they end up contradicting themselves the next time they open their mouth, but the idea is that Sony would do better.

Sony also needs to do or say something publicly about streaming. They used to have the lead for this with PS Now, but they squandered that and instead it’s seen as Xbox’s domain. Even if Sony has to get some partners like Meta to help that would be better, in fact that’s helpful in terms of tying down a potential rival too.

What I’m saying, is that PlayStation needs to be out there throwing their weight around and taking advantage of the Xbox failures, not sitting on the sidelines. The games industry is in turmoil and it needs leaders, and at the moment it has none.

By reader Ashton Marley