A Short Retrospective on the 8th Generation

Anyone who was watching E3 2013 remembers very clearly how much Microsoft stumbled with Don Mattrick at the helm and his "TV TV TV!" approach to the console. Seemingly wanting to release a DVR rather than an actual video game console. I was only 12 back then but I remember this vividly, and how much of a disaster it was for first impressions.

First impressions carry the weight of consoles throughout their generations. It's how the Wii dominated sales, it's how the PS2 became a juggernaut, it's the "299" moment from the PS1 - and Microsoft screwed this up badly.

Source

Sony had all the ammo, such as their "how to borrow a Playstation 4 game" video due to Microsoft's draconian DRM methods that were quickly abandoned. And we can clearly see that it worked, the PS4 hugely outsold the Xbox One at first.

Time went by however, Xbox got a new and much prettier dashboard, and new good games were starting to come out.

Then Gamepass happened.
Gamepass was what saved the Xbox One, it's what I know many of my friends bought the console for. It was a huge library of great titles for a decent price, anyone with not a whole lot of money jumped at the opportunity.

Sony is still trying to catch up with services like PS Plus Extra, but their pricing is a bit on the more expensive side and there just aren't enough heavy hitters compared to Gamepass.

Microsoft is doing deal after deal with huge companies like SEGA, bringing new releases of their beloved franchises day one.

But I still believe in how good the PS4 is. Even if their subscription service isn't as good, the console is still all around more powerful due to its GDDR5 RAM and better GPU, and also has exclusives that have hooked me in more.
Not to say that Halo isn't one of my all time favs, I played a bunch of Master Chief Collection and Infinite.

nice

But God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Gran Turismo and more are just absolutely incredible experiences.
And lest we forget, there's the whole Japanese support for Playstation. You see a lot more Japanese titles coming to PS4 (when they were current gen), and for a weeb like me that's just great.

I still love both consoles, and I've had a huge soft spot for the Xbox One ever since I got my One S in 2019. But it's safe to say that PS4 won this generation: in sales, in exclusives, and in UX.

Microsoft is getting closer and closer to beating the excellence of Playstation but that still might take a while. I find Xbox menus to be rather clunky for example. They have nowhere near the charm as Playstation menus.

I'm still torn as to where I'll go this generation. I've owned a Series S that unfortunately had its USB ports die on me, but I'm not sure now if my next console will be a Series X or PS5... But I'm leaning heavily on the PS5.

Thanks for reading!