Look, I know that this is a PlayStation site and all but c’mon now, let’s be honest with ourselves and call a spade a spade, the Xbox 360 (like the PS3) was a pretty decent chunk of console hardware wasn’t it? Finally making good on the promises that Microsoft seeded with the original Xbox back in 2001, the Xbox 360 stormed into our living rooms and bedrooms with the sort of vigour that let us know Microsoft was done messing about and this console was going to be its main event, its Wrestlemania VI if you will.
Xbox 360 set a solid foundation for online multiplayer on consoles
From the off and Perfect Dark Zero notwithstanding, it’s fair to say that Microsoft made the most of its second bite at the console apple, so long as you didn’t live in Japan. Chiefly, online multiplayer was a great boon that Xbox 360 owners enjoyed as Microsoft built off the momentum that Halo 2 generated a year or so earlier on the original Xbox, forging its new console an identity as the place to be when you’re up for a bit of online multiplayer gaming. Bolstered in large part by Call of Duty’s indomitable online presence and popularity, Xbox 360 was simply the place to be for online multiplayer. Of course, it didn’t help that the PS3 versions of these games largely fared extremely poorly when compared to their Xbox 360 counterparts to the point that considering them equal is accurate in the same way that crap could be considered a foodstuff.
Elsewhere, Microsoft would start making strides elsewhere in order to distance themselves from the competition. Xbox Live Arcade was a particularly important component of Microsoft’s evolving console strategy, with the likes of Castle Crashers, Braid and Shadow Complex not only raising the stock of the console but also the profile of the then fledgling console indie scene as well. If such advances were indicative of a platform holder that finally got it, then the late to the party PS3 on the other hand was the polar opposite. Still high on the dizzying vapour of the commercial success that the incredible PS2 achieved at the beginning of the millennium, Sony thought that it could do no wrong and assumed that a console hattrick was basically in the bag with PS3.
Sadly, it wasn’t to be because they screwed up. They screwed up bad.
PS3 launched in 2006
Memorably backed by a Kuturagi-era soundbite that oozed more pretension than a Tory Youth craft ale shindig at The Grove, the tagline “This is a luxury item that you’ll have to work extra hours to afford.” did little to endear the more expensive console in the eyes of regular folk or anyone else with an aversion to idiot suits and their idiot-speak. Perhaps worse still was the fact that the games themselves were less than inspiring. With less than inspiring first-party offerings and a penchant for dry humping second place in multiplatform clashes with its Xbox rival, the impetus for owning Sony’s third-generation console early on wasn’t very strong at all to say the least.
A late rally in the PS3’s life cycle notwithstanding, Sony clearly needed to change things up for its fourth home console and so it was then, that the successor to the Xbox 360 would emerge nearly eight years later, essentially wearing the face of its rival when the PS4 was released in November 2013.
Like the Xbox 360, the PS4 was envisaged as a sensible console. A big part of this mentality was a massive shift from the exotic tech that was rammed into its predecessor. The PS4, much like the Xbox 360 before it, was a console that boasted components from well-known vendors and possessed none of the proprietary Cell-based architecture nonsense that made its predecessor such a colossal ballache to program for.
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Sony gets it right with PS4
Improved and more efficient architecture also meant that the multiplatform roles were reversed this time around, with PS4 now outpacing the Xbox One in titles in like for like titles in much the same fashion that the Xbox 360 did to the PS3 a generation earlier. From Battlefield 4 to Metal Gear Solid V , the Xbox One versions of these games lacked the resolution and very often the smoother framerates of its PS4 counterparts, putting an emphatic stamp on the PS4’s technical superiority over its rival.
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Not content to merely have a better performing console than its industry foe, Sony also made sure that it had better games too. While the likes of Bloodborne and InFamous: Second Son are nice and all, some of the best gaming experiences you can enjoy have come from the indie scene and it’s here that Sony would again follow the blueprint lain by Microsoft’s last-generation console.
Spearheaded by industry legend Shahid Kamal Ahmad, Sony took on the independent development community, which had been so poorly treated by Microsoft at the beginning of Xbox One’s life owing to its god awful ID@Xbox policy (a miserable assault course of bureaucratic hoop jumping that effectively limited the number of formats devs could release their games on) and treated them with the same reverence and care that they deserved. With the likes of Resogun, Rogue Legacy, Helldivers and the upcoming No Man’s Sky, it was clear that Sony had took over from where Microsoft left off; cultivating some tremendous industry talent while ushering in some of the most enjoyable gaming experiences ever seen on console.
Shahid Kamal Ahmad spear-headed the rise of the indies on PS4
Of course, Sony’s domination wouldn’t be complete if it wasn’t able to nab that last bastion of Xboxness – the Call of Duty franchise and so that’s exactly what it did. With first-time exclusivity on DLC that neatly mirrored the same strategy that Activision had with Microsoft years before, it became apparent that Sony wanted to appeal to that same Call of Duty demographic which had been so successful in bringing Microsoft’s console kicking and screaming into the mainstream consciousness.
In truth though, the ‘defection’ of Call of Duty to PlayStation was just an extension of what was already happening in regards to Sony’s savvy third-party strategy. With eternal console exclusives such as Street Fighter V and well-timed exclusive advertising on blockbusters such as Destiny and Star Wars: Battlefront it became abundantly clear that rather than just nabbing the last big thing, the folks at Sony were also up for making PlayStation the best place to play the next big things, too.
Microsoft had arguably, much like Sony had done years earlier, screwed up. With Xbox One, the house that Bill built was caught in a familiar whirlwind of arrogance and earth-axis shunting back pattery as Microsoft had lost sight of the prize and spectacularly failed to grasp what its audience wanted. Publicly, all that goodwill which had been so painstakingly earned during Microsoft’s second console generation was gone in a flash of Kinect Avatar shoe porn and the most mind-numbingly crappy E3 pressers this side of Ubisoft’s risible Mr. Coffee skits. Microsoft’s PR machine had, somewhat evidently, been apparently staffed by monkeys with a fetish for failure.
Xbox One fails to impress under the shadow of PlayStation 4
From the pre-owned digital rights management issues that plagued early perception of the console since before its launch, through to the chronic mishandling of indies and the frankly idiotic drive to make Kinect relevant when it instead should have been fired into the sun, Microsoft did a crushingly brilliant job of shooting itself in the foot. Such a good job did it do in fact, that italienated many long-time Microsoft allegiants and platform fence-sitters, sending them scurrying into the lovingly warm embrace of the PlayStation brand which looked to provide them with everything that they wanted the next Xbox to provide but failed to do so. It’s all fair to say, that many developers and publishers weren’t too happy with what Microsoft was doing with the Xbox One either.
Still, there’s nothing quite like getting your rear end handed to you to stoke the fires of innovation and while the gap has widened to such an extent that Redmond giant may no longer score pole position in this console generation, it is at least fighting hard from second place because, well, good competition ultimately benefits *everyone* and really, that is a Good Thing no matter how you slice it.
So, if by the end of this article you still haven’t lowered your pitchforks at the multiple mentions of ‘Microsoft’ and Xbox’ throughout, then take heart in the fact that not only is Sony on track to make the best PlayStation ever, but probably the best Xbox too. Nevertheless, despite such an apparently devastating lead and the array of advantages that Sony currently possess, it’s important to never forget that Hubris is a dangerous thing, after all just ask Microsoft.