As we all know, a few days ago Phil Spencer, head of the Xbox division, took part in a podcast about the future of the company's business. One of the main points to be touched on was the first games to arrive on rival consoles, initially four of them.
And make no mistake about other games, because if these four pilot games are successful, others will surely follow. But this isn't the main subject, but it is related because we live in a world where part of the community exists only to exalt one brand and, consequently, diminish another.
As happens several times a year, we've had access to some information regarding Sony PlayStation's fiscal year. One of the main points that has caused a stir in the community is the fact that Sony has lowered its sales forecast from 25 million to 21 million for the fiscal year.
Some have characterized this as a failure on Sony's part, but is it? Rockstar Games recently released some documents with some interesting information, one of them saying that the current generation would have sold around 77 million consoles.
Microsoft has a habit of not revealing console sales or other figures, but this is somewhat pointless as companies such as Rockstar and Sony release this type of information. By subtracting the total value indicated by Rockstar and the value indicated by Sony, it is possible to see that the total sales in all three years of the Xbox Series generation amount to between 24 and 25 units.
Bearing in mind that this fiscal year alone Sony is forecasting to sell 21 million units of the PlayStation 5, which is basically everything the Xbox Series has sold in its entire life cycle, I find it hard to think that this figure would fit in with a failure.
So, moving on, with the recent announcement that Xbox would be moving to a more multiplatform model, the acting president of PlayStation made some statements that could indicate that Sony might follow suit, as is already happening with the PC.
Of course, some opportunistic sites and channels began to create content indicating that PlayStation games would also be coming to Xbox, causing some louder communities to engage with the subject and, consequently, generate clicks.
But with a simple search, it's possible to find a document released by Sony itself on the internet that indicates what these platforms might be and, amazingly, Nintendo Switch and Xbox explicitly aren't one of them. And if you don't trust in this document hereIt is possible to understand this by means of a interview given by Hiroki Totoki himself.
As indicated in the interview, it's possible that some games will arrive faster on PC in order to increase the company's profits, an example of which is Helldivers 2 itself, which is enjoying absurd success. And this year we'll also have Concord, which will also be released for the Sony console and PC simultaneously. But if you want a PlayStation game on Xbox, MLB The Show is there, even on Game Pass.
And well, one thing that can also be stressed is that everything Totoki says could fall apart, and this is because, as said, he is the interim president of the company. In a while, we'll have a permanent president, and his ideas could either go in this direction or go in the complete opposite direction.
Another thing that made headlines in recent days was a sentence that the president released saying that the studios should "take responsibility for development deadlines". Soon, the noisy people started shouting, even more so with the information that we wouldn't have any big games this year.
But, once again, this phrase was misinterpreted and it wasn't about Sony's first-party studios, but an internal studio of the company that remains de facto independent: Bungie. Although PlayStation owns the studio, Bungie operates completely independently and its games, both current and future, will be on other platforms, including Xbox. And it's easy to understand why, after all, the studio recently postponed an expansion for Destiny 2.
And since we mentioned the fact that PlayStation won't have any major first-party games until March 2025 (the end of the 2024 financial year), several sites made a point of not giving the public the full story. It was mentioned that there would be no games from major franchises such as God of War Ragnarok or Marvel's Spider-Man in this period, which is totally understandable.
And it goes without saying that in recent years we've had several successful games that weren't from major Sony franchises, such as Ghost of Tsishima, Death Stranding, Horizon Zero Dawn, Returnal, Helldivers, Bloodborne and several other super interesting games. And it's not as if they didn't have any games to release during this period.
At the beginning of the year alone, Sony's console has had games such as Silent Hill: The Short Message, Helldivers 2, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, and soon Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Rise of The Ronin, Stellar Blade, Concord, Silent Hill, Until Dawn, Pacific Drive and many more, as we indicated in the our post. And not only that, as indicated in the images below, a major insider says that Sony may have a very big year next fiscal year.
That said, it's very unlikely that Sony is in a crisis as some channels, websites and communities are trying to make it out to be. It remains the market leader and can afford not to have a game from a major franchise for quite some time, but at least it has been very transparent about it.
This year we may also see the announcement of the PS5 Pro, which accompanies the start of the second half of this generation and is already working on the next console, which will probably arrive in 2028. Not to mention that it already has a game in development with Hideo Kojima, who has characterized the game as the culmination of his work, meaning we can expect something big.
If I could give you one piece of advice, it would be: take a good look at who your sources are and who you follow to keep up to date with industry matters. A (large) number of media outlets just want to see the circus burn to generate clicks or try to compensate for one side's mistakes by attacking the other. The sources of the information cited are linked in the text.
See also:
HI-FI Rush officially announced for PlayStation 5!
Epic Mickey Rebrushed on its way to Nintendo Switch!
Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection brings the franchise back to its roots!
