Randomly Mine: I Won't Be Buying an Xbox (Patreon)

I'll likely be buying a Playstation 5.

Why? Because which console I'm buying next year, has nothing to do corporate favoritism, preference, or what my friends are getting. It's all down to practicality. 

The only reason I booted up the Xbox One was to capture games I didn't already have on PC, or backwards compatible X360 games. In every event that a game can be captured on PC instead, I go for it. Again, not purely down to preference, but because I can record the same game at 1440p 60fps, rather than 1080p 30fps. For the sake of making content with higher quality footage, I'm motivated to avoid my own console.

"Aren't the new consoles 4k though?"

Yes, they are. But I don't need two consoles for that.

Microsoft's new-movement for crossplay integration and much improved PC releases directly alongside its console counterparts, means that there won't be any games on Xbox I don't already have access through my workstation/gaming PC. Meanwhile, the PS5 is looking to continue Sony's exclusive reign, and should it have backwards compatibility, I'll even have a machine that lets me access PS4 games for videos in a higher quality than the standard console.

It's strange to me though, because I've never been a console fanboy. Growing up, I liked each platform for individual reasons. Gamecube was the go to for parties, the Xbox for Online, and the Playstation for multi-tool functionality. Each had its own identity and personality, which is probably a part of why so many people got invested in which one was best.

Now though, each console is so bland that what it looks like, how it functions, and what can it do, isn't even a factor to me anymore. Now it's all just about what do I get access to? And in the case of Xbox, I gain access to nothing. It's completely impersonal.

No question, that's partly due to growing up, and no longer giving the forum page wars any credit, but I think it's also just due to how much the console market has changed; how the unification of online-play and functionality puts more emphasis on what the console has access to, rather than what can it do.

I wrote this on January 15th...

Nothing has changed.

The Xbox Series whatevers have even less than what I saw last year with the cancellation of Halo, and one of the selling points made by Sony in their own conference was how I'm going to be able to play the same games I already own on a system I already own on the brand new system asking $500 USD.

All that's changed?

I know what they look like.

A router, and a mini-fridge.

Again, it doesn't stem from a disliking of either consoles themselves. In-fact, when discussing with friends, these systems might actually have the most potential relative to hardware on the market, compared to previous generations. It's rather the opposite approach from last generation. Where the PS4 & Xbox One were developed to be cheap bricks with no backwards combability to hook you to their online services, now they're expensive machines (both for company and consumer) who are advertising from day one their ability to play the past.

But in-terms of what the consoles are offering in unique content?

This might be the dullest console launch in history.

Yes, Demons' Souls looks awesome, but isn't it telling the game people are pre-ordering is a remake?