A reader is frustrated with the current state of gaming and hopes that the PS6 will be a simple and straightforward console, that focuses on single-player games.
After watching Xbox self-destruct this week, I have to say that, as a PlayStation owner, I’m not happy about it. I’m a PlayStation owner, not fan, and I am under no delusions that Sony is interested in me for anything other than the contents of my wallet. They’re not my friend and if left unchecked, without any direct competition, they will be as anti-consumer as the law allows, and then some.
So, I’m not pleased that PlayStation has beaten Xbox, quite the opposite. If not for the Xbox 360, Sony would’ve served up the PlayStation 3 just as it was and expected us to swallow it all down with no complaints – high price and no games. If that had continued, then who knows what we’d have to be putting up with by now.
We’ll be in exactly that position but worse with the PlayStation 6, if things go badly. At least with the PlayStation 3, Sony still recognised that their main job was to make a powerful console with good exclusives. Nowadays all Sony seems interested in is doing the absolute minimum effort, while chasing the dream of a successful live service game.
Sony will be celebrating the failures at Xbox, not because it was ever particularly close competition, but because now they’ve got free reign to do whatever they want, with no other choice for people other than the Switch 2.
Although the good games keep coming there’s a lot to be worried about with gaming at the moment, and I’m already concerned about the rumours that the PlayStation 6 is going to be a hybrid console or a portable and a home one, like the next gen Xbox.
I don’t want any of that. The hybrid will compromise the graphics and a portable will be expensive and compromise on graphics. All I want is for the PlayStation 6 to be a normal console with normal games.
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I know that might not seem very adventurous but as far as I’m concerned gaming peaked with the PlayStation 4 and the more we move away from that, in terms of time and the attitude of Sony – and, for what it’s worth, Microsoft – the more it feels like the whole concept of gaming is leaking away.
For years now we’ve had mobile gaming, free-to-play, microtransactions, and live service games eating away at gaming, and very successfully too. Mobile is the most common way for people to play games nowadays, while the games they do play on consoles and PC are usually just one of a dozen or so ‘forever games’, many of which have been out for a decade or more.
I hate all of that. If you’re into them then great, I’m not trying to take it away from you. I just want what I like to exist as well, but at the moment it barely does. Sony is so off the ball this generation it’s as if they’re not even playing. They know what people want but they’re point blank not giving us it, in favour of playing roulette with the idea of having a hit live service game.
All I want is a boring, ordinary console: powerful, quiet, and ideally not the size of a house. I don’t want it to be portable or to have ‘innovative’ controllers or any other nonsense. I just want it to put all its effort into running games and that’s it.
Wanting a boring console isn’t a bad thing, it just means I want Sony to provide a format and let the games speak for themselves. Proper games, not forever games, and ideally primarily single-player games. Just like it was on the PlayStation 4.
I have no idea whether any of my pleas will be answered but if the PlayStation 6 is a gimmick console, where most of its games are live service titles, then I’ll be lamenting the collapse of Xbox all the more.
By reader Carlton
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