I'm posting info I found interesting while making my link list last month. This article corresponds to Sony and Microsoft talking about going third party, and the GDC article I will be writing later this.
Phil Spencer says he wants Epic marketplace on the XBox.
XBox Exclusives and ports
Phil Spencer speculates about exclusives actually being needed anymore. He even wants Epic on Xbox
Some publishers and designers don't feel like making games for XBOX anymore. It's an attempt to create controversy.
Phil Spencer isn't looking that good in general though
Phil Spencer may be the one that destroys Xbox.
But it's not like the guy he replaced has any better opinions.
Peter Moore doesn't think consoles should be a thing anymore. He should know, he killed the Dreamcast and led XBox. At the moment he leads Unity. The guy who looks like Satan should totally be believed.
It's not like Sony is doing any better.
Sony does not rise to the victory expected
You can own a bobblehead of Jim Ryan, the boss at PlayStation
PS5 was the top seller in February, but that's after console sale shrinkage. Helldiver's 2 is the best selling game.
Meanwhile Nintendo is getting more games for the Switch. Even old Rare games are showing up on the console. In a Nintendo Direct they announced even more
_ND: Rare
Rare Software games are being released for the SNES, Nintendo, and N64 apps on Switch. I hope Donkey Kong 64, Goldeneye, and Perfect Dark get released soon. There were already a few games, but Microsoft is just giving up now.
There are 6 games made by Rare that aren't released for the Switch N64 app.
Another list of rare games released
In fact, the biggest complaint is that the Switch needs even more games.
33 games not on Switch
It does look like the console wars are going cold.
I always thought console "wars" were for stupid 12 year olds arguing about teraflops and triangles.
It could be forseen with consoles basically becoming PCs. Terms people still use like "PC port." It's not really much of a port, they are the same architecture. I imagine most devs do a ton of the work on PC first, not like the old days where you would serial port to a dev kit. Even Sony sees there's money in opening up their games to more of a market with the work involved being minimal to do so.
I don't see consoles going entirely away, tons of people don't care about anything hardware and just want something to play their two or three really mainstream games on. Sony will keep making them. Nintendo will keep making them, if you call the Switch a console. It's more of a dockable successor to the 3DS.
A lot of my complaints about PC were addressed so I went back, with the added benefit of being able to run old games and emulators the easiest of any platform too. Now lets get rid of Windows.
The entire reason they became a "war" is because people were in fact 12 years old and thereby couldn't have plural consoles, nor afford a PC good enough to play games (or be allowed to play with dumb family members).
When you get once a year to ask for an Xbox for Christmas, its in fact a major problem when the big game everyone is playing is on Playstation and you are completely left out by it. So all they can do is impotently hate on the opposite to try and make themselves feel better, and retreat into tribalism.
Adult men participating in it is in fact retarded, but its purpose as a marketing tool and original existence makes complete sense. Same with the fact that consoles are a pittance compared to what they used to be, so most kids will in fact have multiple.
Yeah I only had a Genesis and I shared it with my brother and we had TWO whole games for it and the occasional rental. I don't remember what they cost back then, but I do remember that games cost more than what I could really get as a birthday present. I didn't buy a console myself until the Xbox came out and I was older by then.
I was very lucky though, my Dad worked for an old school (like guys in a pile of junk in an old house programming) company. His boss liked me and used to give me dumb little projects in trade for discarded computer parts. Sure, none of it was good, but to play the shareware stuff I'd download off BBS or cheap stuff I'd get at Radio Shack it was way more than enough.
Well for comparison the N64 launched at 200$, which was considered a literal steal for the value in 1996 to try and lure people into mass adoption. That's 450$ or so today after inflation. The Switch costs about 200$ itself for the Lite version and 300$ for the regular today.
With the games for it costing around 60$ for first party and upwards of 80$ for others a piece. The only difference from today is they religiously slashed prices as games got older back then, so most people probably remember getting them for a fraction of that a year or so later.
Sega seemed to be even more expensive itself than Nintendo, which is probably why they lost that generation's console war so hard.