We told you earlier this week that Sony was having its semi-regular Sony PlayStation State of Play event. We did get what we expected and saw many new games coming to PlayStation, but the overall feeling might have been a bigger surprise. We saw titles coming for Windows PCs, Xbox, and PlayStation. Let’s dig a little deeper into this to see why. Are console wars over? No, they’re just shifting.
Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, has been saying it for years: Game anywhere on any device. The vibe is that as long as gamers are playing something, the odds of also using a Microsoft game or service are pretty high. Gamers may also be signaling that the cost of consoles is starting to outpace wallets and what gamers are willing to invest.
In an article posted by Windows Central, PCs are on the rise, and spending has passed consoles, at least on the content side of things. Since 2011, Windows PCs have grown 65 percent in game content spending. Consoles saw a gain of 18 billion by 2024, while PCs saw a whopping 30 billion. We’ve had the Xbox app for years, Microsoft was first to merge the console with the PC. Doing so has put a wrecking ball to their hardware sells with a steady decline over the past few years.
Microsoft is slowly opening the gates here. In the past month, Microsoft has announced first-party titles coming to PlayStation. Forza Horizon 5 comes this Sprint with Indiana Jones and Age of Empires. For now, consoles are still here, but is this the beginning of publishers and developers giving in to the idea that we don’t want to play games in front of the television all the time? Some of the most popular titles announced during the State of Play show were said to be coming to Windows, Xbox and PlayStation. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater.
So, where do we go from here? Are consoles done? We do know that we’re still waiting for the launch of the Xbox Game Store, which we expected to see last year. Handheld gaming devices such as the Lenovo Legion Go are Windows-powered PCs capable of running the Xbox App. With no mention of what the next Xbox console might be yet, a pivot to pushing software sales over hardware could be on the horizon.
