Microsoft and Sony have both completed their respective conferences at E3 2017, and while each has had their own moments to shine, comparisons between the hardware in each company’s family of consoles are only beginning to climax.
In a recent interview with Eurogamer, PlayStation global sales and marketing manager Jim Ryan sat down to elaborate on some of the buzz following the E3 conferences. Ryan had little to retort when it came to PlayStation’s meager 2017 holiday games lineup, comparisons between the PlayStation Pro and Xbox One S, and Sony’s disinterest in allowing cross-platform play between PlayStation and other gaming devices.
Ryan did, however, have a lot to say about how developers will utilize the superior power of the Xbox One X over the PlayStation 4 Pro. Namely, that they won’t, citing the history of the PlayStation 3 as a possible indicator for the future: ” … we had on paper more impressive specifications than our competition, and in some areas by quite a considerable margin … What happened was that developers, maybe at the behest of publishers, developed up to the lowest common denominator and stopped there. And in very few cases took advantage of the additional horsepower of the PS3.”
Ryan believes it is unlikely that developers will exhaust the additional assets and time that it takes to develop a more graphically notable difference on the Xbox One X if they have already reached a limit that the PlayStation 4 Pro cannot surpass. “You don’t do one set of work to get up to one level and then a different amount of work and consequently may need to go further,” he says.
Although Ryan’s point about the PS3 not doing as well as the Xbox 360 is mostly true – the slightly less powerful 360 was indeed outselling the PS3 from 2006 until early 2013 – modern circumstances make it unreasonable to apply that same logic to the current struggle between the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X. While the gaming industry seemed to value reliable online connectivity and quality exclusive games most last generation, the current focus seems to be more on hardware than on anything else. Gamers have accepted and even welcomed a belief that the finest games are the best-looking ones, as evidenced by the existence – and even success – of the PlayStation 4 Pro. If gamers value power, developers must do the same.
Microsoft’s future success will ensue not only because of the characteristics of their product, but because of a meticulous marketing strategy too. While Sony did little to capitalize on the PlayStation 3’s slight edge over the Xbox 360 back in the day, Microsoft has spent an entire year advertising what was first called the Project Scorpio, now the Xbox One X, as “the world’s most powerful console” already.
Unless Sony announces imminent first-party games or a major price-drop for the PlayStation 4 Pro, I don’t think that Gran Turismo Sport and new DLC for Horizon Zero Dawn will be enough to stop wavering hardcore gamers from adopting the Xbox One X this holiday season. It is possible that PlayStation will catch back up to Xbox in the coming years as highly anticipated games like God of War and Spiderman are released, but with Sony still rejecting longtime requests like cross-platform play and PSN ID changes while Microsoft reaffirms their pledge to keep the Xbox brand united by, for example, bringing original Xbox games to the Xbox One ecosystem, I don’t see Sony bouncing to the top of the gaming market any time soon.
Tristan was a regular ICXM contributor between 2015–2017, publishing 51 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @tbogost.