2014 was a strange year for video games. It was the year that saw the PS4 and XB1 smash console sales records, despite not having any truly compelling games to play on them. It was the year of buggy, broken or just plain disappointing 3rd party titles. It was the year of “GamerGate”. It was the year in which Nintendo sat in the corner and quietly released smash hit after smash hit. In short, 2014 was a bit of a roller-coaster.
With the year behind us and 2015 beckoning us hither, I wanted to take a moment and reflect on where we are and how we got here.
Fourteen months on from launch and the most recent sales data from Microsoft puts them at 10 million XB1’s shipped to suppliers. Not sold-through, mind you, which means actual sales of XB1’s could be anything from the 5.1 million they reported back at the start of 2014 to the full 10 million, which is unlikely.
Sony on the other hand released sold-through data last week that shows that the company has shifted a truly staggering 18.5 million PS4’s over the same time period. Meanwhile, Nintendo’s latest figures put the Wii U at 7.5 million lifetime sales.
So, as you can see, this is not so much a console war as it is a massacre. Sony, it seems, learnt a lot from it’s ups and downs with PS3 and has come out of the blocks fighting, while Microsoft has been left somewhat bewildered in Sony’s wake. And Nintendo? Well, we’ll get to that. So how did it come to this? Let’s take a look at the big three, starting with team Redmond.
It’s fair to say that the last two years have been a slippery slide from incredulity to tantamount disaster for Microsoft. First, at E3 2013, they showed off a huge, ugly, brick with a ridiculous name, then proceeded to market it as an extremely expensive, voice-activated TV tuner.
Oh, and they also dropped the doozy of it being always-online and having some of the most absurd and draconian DRM policies regarding used games. Consumers were rightly outraged at Microsoft’s heavy handedness and, frankly, cocky manner in thinking they could dictate radical change and expect us all to just bend over.
But then it looked like things might get turned around; Phil Spencer was brought in as the new head of Team Xbox and those insane policy choices were reversed. The next big move was uncoupling the XB1 from Kinect, thus dropping the system’s price, as well as the only feature that actually distinguished XB1 from the PS4. They followed this up at E3 2014 with the news that the next Tomb Raider game would be an Xbox exclusive. Cue internet explosion.
What should have been Microsoft’s coup-de-grace ended up being more like that video of the drunk Russian guy who runs himself over with his own car. You know the one. It might have been Phil Spencer’s inability to keep the smirk off his face. It might have been the needlessly ambiguous language used to define the exclusivity (which to this day is a mystery). It might have just been that gamers had come to view Spencer and Microsoft in general as the devil.
A price drop heading into 2014’s holiday season saw the XB1 become cheaper than PS4 which, without a doubt, accounts for the recent sales surge Microsoft has been enjoying. Now we’re heading into 2015, what sort of state is Team Redmond in? Well, XB1 is still a huge, ugly, brick with a ridiculous name. It’s also, still mostly a very expensive TV tuner, only now it can’t even boast being ‘voice activated’. It’s two big exclusives are Sunset Overdrive, which I thought was mediocre and Halo: Master Chief Collection, whose multiplayer is STILL a broken mess.
Microsoft humbled Sony well and truly with the 360, and one can only assume that that experience rather clouded their judgement this time around. They had some bold ideas for the XB1 which, given a shift in presentation, may not have been so widely despised. In their drive to conquer the living room however, I feel they may have irreversibly alienated the people who made the 360 such a huge success, and in doing so left the field wide open to Team Tokyo.
And so, on the other side of the DMZ you have Sony, who are still riding high on a wave of goodwill that stretches back to E3 2013. That goodwill however seems to be built largely on the simple fact that Sony isn’t Microsoft.
At this point in the fight, Sony’s image is one of the righteous knight, facing off against the pure evil that is Microsoft. There is of course no denying that Sony have handled their relationship with the gaming public much, much better than the Redmond team.
When Sony announced the PS4, they decided to focus on what gamers care about; gaming. The PS4 promised to be a true games console that didn’t need to be always-online, didn’t stop you from trading used games and didn’t cost as much as the XB1. It is on those factors alone that the PS4 has thus dominated the 8th generation.
But a year and a half on from ‘that E3′ and how different is Sony’s machine from Microsoft’s? By all reasonable measurements, the PS4 and XB1 are practically identical, leading even Sony to wonder just why their machine is outselling the competition so extravagantly. But look closer and we see that Sony is quietly embarking on a journey towards Microsoft’s earlier visions of the XB1.
Playstation Now offers us a glimpse of a possible future in which Sony does away with home consoles altogether, in favour of always-online, subscription only, cloud based gaming. Playstation Vue will see PS3 and PS4 turned into very expensive TV tuners. In other words, Sony is doing what Microsoft tried to do, but instead of giving them the middle finger like they did with the XB1, consumers are clamouring for their wallets.
It is clear to me that Microsoft has suffered a public image disaster. Last generation, they were the cool guys, but this time around they are public enemy number one. Sony, now being viewed as the true ‘good guys’ are pretty much free to do what they like from here on out.
Meanwhile, quiet guys Nintendo have been keeping their heads down, doing what they do better than anyone else; making amazing video games. Their Wii U might not boast as much processing power or be found sitting under as many TV’s as the PS4 or XB1, but no one can deny that Nintendo have blown all the others away with the quality of their games.
2015 promises to be the year that finally delivers the must-have games that people buy new consoles to play. Bloodburne, Halo 5, Zelda U, MGS V: The Phantom Pain, Batman Arkham Knight, Mario Maker, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Scalebound, Splatoon, Dying Light, Star Wars Battlefront, Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The Division, Uncharted 4… breath…
Last year may have been a strangely exciting and yet unfulfilling year for games, but the next is looking much more encouraging. Microsoft have an uphill battle on their hands to recover some of the consumer amity they’ve lost, while Sony it seems needs only show up to win. Nintendo need to stick to their guns and continue the great work they do in making some of the best games available. Despite it’s ups and downs over the past year, I feel optimistic about 2015.
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Sebastian has been playing games since the age of 8, cutting his teeth with Nintendo and Sega, and now can usually be found dying repeatedly in online FPS’s. Really, he should just quit. Open world RPG’s and grand strategy games also see him lose his sense of reality for several months of the year. You won’t find him on twitter though since he lives in a cave
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