I think if Microsoft actually focused purely on the development of good games and stayed out of all the Twitter mob fights and woke politics, it would help their platform a lot where Sony just hurts itself by doing so. The trouble is they don't - they only have a few core IPs at their disposal and are unwilling to foster a new one for a couple of generations unless it makes Halo-level bank from the start, which simply doesn't happen. They need to settle for moderate success and assist in turning that into major success if they want to gain any ground, but they haven't done much of anything despite owning companies like Rare. The potential is there, but all they want to do is play second fiddle.
Yep. Microsoft could chuck resources at spreading thin across many IP's. Even remastering previous popular ones from rare, bethesda, [name an MS studio]. Xbox has become too American for it to work. It needs to step back, wind its collective neck in, and just make games.
J Allard coming on stage at e3 in hoody and jeans, sitting and playing Halo. That's what i want. Let the games do the talking, then stfu. It's another thing i appreciate about Sony; they don't hype anything. When was the last time they said anything outside of a state of play? And it's usually just the devs. Yet MS will bang on about their E3 for months and months and months. Well, they've banged on about MS E3 since 2014 and we still haven't seen shit for games.
I see it less as Sony being a great brand and more of them being a Japanese company where all this "gameplay is the worst part of video games" drivel doesn't hold a lot of traction. They also have to directly compete against Nintendo in their homeland, and Nintendo can definitely capitalize on Sony's failures, which makes them both more competitive and focused on quality than Microsoft.
You nailed it. The American business ethos and the Japanese ethos are completely different, as much as America tries to say otherwise. American companies are 'leftist' in their corporate outlook and structure (i don't mean support Biden, i just mean they follow the 'left' political ideology but with a business). Whereas the Japanese are more about honour, respect and most importantly, a product doing what it's suppose to do.
Games are supposed to entertain, not show-off flashy production values as an empty vessel to peddle an ideology or to pander.
Amazingly, after Nintendo and Sony have dominated the industry for decades, Microsoft still haven't learned why the OG xbox and Xbox 360 were so good as consoles, and why games made during that era are still the best Microsoft has ever produced