First, XBox may be moving to a more 3rd party company. This has meant lots of publicity on being 3rd party is winning.
Xbox and Exclusives
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.
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.
It reminds me of a joke from Kung Pao
Then we see the analysts claiming victory.
Detecting a paid off Analyst
Sean Malstrom is a fairly well known blogger who predicted the Wii and DS selling well. This series of articles is looking at a single analyst and how he is promoting an idea paid for by Microsoft and Sony. It starts with looking at an analyst try to play with statistics to get his own conclusions. Direct comparisons are not given.
Then he shows that this analyst is being given a lot of press in articles. The analyst is compared to Michael Pachter who was paid to say things for Sony and Microsoft back in the day.
This one is a bit ranty, but it asks why bad ideas are being promoted. Especially since there is an obvious winner to compare to.
The analyst says some big things like Console Wars don't exist anymore. Companies like Sony and Nintendo should put their games on Xbox and PC. Also Microsoft is winning, losers. Malstrom points out Microsoft owns news sites, and likely this guy.
I could also post all of the articles from Sony looking at similar things, and articles from 2 months ago that cover this subject, but that's a lot of reading. Here are some samples.
Sony Samples
There will be aggressive Sony game releases to PC.
This means games go multiplatform much earlier. Sega watches knowingly with a smile
PS5 has no new games planned for the coming year.
PS5 at “Latter Stage of Its life”
Random Propaganda
Japan is losing, even though it's not. Videogame companies are doing fine, but other countries play different games, so Japan must be losing.
Could the Xbox become the next Dreamcast
I don't have a state of Sony this month source list by the way. Beyond the Helldiver's fiasco there isn't much to talk about. Either the PS6 is coming out soon, or the PlayStation in general is exiting first party status.
The analysts and articles all say this is the right thing to do.
They might have a point about XBox. Imagine pouring all that R&D into making a shitty console when you're already the company that makes the OS on 72% of the PCs out there. They could license to third parties to their own Steam Machine equivalent with living-room targeted Windows PCs. Then the XBox division becomes software-only which has much larger margins.
Merge the ecosystems and then go all-in on Gamepass and the storefront. They're already competing with Steam, Epic, Sony, and Nintendo - why not fight a war on only one front by making the idea of a "console" obsolete and annihilating the PlayStation brand? Let Nintendo have whatever's left of the console space after that. Nintendo's carved out their own, very well defended, niche. MS was never getting that business anyway. Not to mention the console business is getting fucked at the low end by mobile.
I guarantee you the business guys have at least considered it. Business guys love outsourcing HW and focusing on those juicy SW margins.
There were a lot of people who said PC would do the same to consoles. I think the two are different enough that they play different fields. What's stopping a console from taking over smartphone territory?
Convenience. Design functionality. Limited carrying capacity of a person. Competing investment requirements for a new phone. Habit forming.