With game pass popping off the last 18 months it seems like Xbox has really hit their stride as a publishing house. Admittedly they’ve largely done this by throwing billions upon billions of dollars to buy IP, but Expedition 33, Palworld, blue Prince and other hits popping off shows this hasn’t exclusively been the case.
Meanwhile, Sony have had the most expensive flop in video game history with Concord, PSVR2 basically being DOA, and a perplexing pivot to chasing live service trends has meant that the system has missed out on several potential first party hits. Their subscription service pales comparatively to game pass, and there is very little of interest coming in the pipeline.
The PS5 has won this gen over Xbox in terms of sales, but I think customer confidence in their approach has dropped massively, at least for me.
Admittedly I enjoyed Astrobot and Demon’s Souls a lot, and didn’t buy an Xbox series console. But the other exclusives have been few and far between, games have been overly expensive on their digital storefront, and their recent console price rise has been a downer. Harry Potter being a Warner Brothers multi-platform being mid is kind of on the side for me.