A reader paints a bleak picture of the current console landscape and suggests that Sony already knows the PlayStation 6 will be only for a small percentage of rich fans.
It’s been obvious from the start that Sony has no intention of reversing their decision about physical media on the PlayStation 5. This wasn’t a conversation or a proposal; this was them telling their fans they can like it or lump it. There is no alternative: physical discs won’t exist after next year and then the only place you’ll be able to buy games is from the PlayStation Store.
There’ll be codes in a box in shops but that’s not going to be popular with either customers or shops. So beyond that it’s literally Sony or nothing, which is obviously exactly how they want it. If they’re the only way you can buy games then they can charge whatever they want and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. They also have no incentive to offer fair refund options; they’ll just keep it as it is.
So your options are either buy an Xbox (who’s going to do that?), buy a Switch 2 (it doesn’t have all third party games), or buy a PC (who wants that hassle?). Sony, of course, know this and the unattractiveness of the other options is exactly why they’re doing it. They’ve got us all trapped in a situation where either we play by their rules or we have to go find another hobby.
I don’t want to take up knitting though, so what are my options? I realise I’m being dismissive of PC gaming, and a lot of people seem keen on it, but I hate messing around with hardware and options and all that business. And so many games seem to have problems on PC even when they run fine on consoles. Plug and play is all I want and that’s exactly what consoles offer. Or at least they did until performance modes and all that other PC nonsense started getting into console games too.
The Switch 2 is probably something I’d like to have anyway, but while it does have decent third party support it all seems very random and you can’t count on anything definitely coming to it or not. Except I would bet quite a bit that GTA 6 isn’t going to make it.
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So Sony has got us by the short and curlies. I don’t like that and I don’t like companies treating me like a sentient wallet, but that’s the situation we’re in now. If Xbox were in a healthier place they’d be just as bad, heck they tried to pull all this off years earlier with the Xbox One, but they’re kind of stuck trying to play the underdog card and hoping people will like them again because… Halo and Gears Of War? Yeah, that’s not happening.
People have been talking about the end of consoles for years, but it’s mostly been just exaggerations and doomers trying to stretch a point. But now it feels like we’re actually there. There is going to be a PlayStation 6 but it’s going to cost a grand and that means only a tiny number of people are going to buy it – it won’t be a mass market device anymore. It’ll be the opposite of what the PS1 and PlayStation 2 were.
To what degree Sony could’ve done something about this I’m not sure. They can’t affect the component crisis, but they could’ve definitely tried to do something about development times and pushed companies back towards making double-A games acceptable. Or just pushing shorter games, like Spider-Man: Miles Morales. But no, they didn’t do anything sensible like that or make any attempt whatsoever to stop console gaming flying off a cliff.
You would’ve thought they might, considering that’s how they make their money and all, but no. So what is the future of PlayStation and non-Nintendo consoles in general? The PlayStation 6 is a novelty, in my view, and they know it. Just like the Steam Machine and Project Helix. They’re hyper expensive PC/console hybrids for super fans only and the companies know that.
I think the future of PlayStation is the handheld they keep hinting at. It’s going to be like a lower-specced PlayStation 5 (kind of like the Xbox Series S to the Xbox Series X) and it’ll keep the PlayStation 5 going for another eight years or so. There won’t be any PlayStation 6 exclusives, it’ll just upscale and boost PlayStation 5 games.
I feel that’s been kind of obvious for a while now but there’s literally nowhere else to go. You can’t make something more powerful than the PlayStation 5 and have it cost any less than the PS5 Pro and you can’t make exclusive games for a console that hardly anyone owns (which admittedly is something Microsoft has yet to learn).
So that’s it. Console gaming got as far as the PlayStation 5 and then stopped. I’m sure the PlayStation 6 will be able to do some little extra tricks and improvements, but the underlying games will be PlayStation 5 games, designed for what by then will be last gen hardware. Those that were complaining that this gen seemed like it’s barely started don’t know how right they are…
By reader Ruben
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