by Microsoft’s big Xbox announcement last week was an anti-climax: only four games, none of which are particularly earth-shattering, are making their way to PlayStation or Nintendo Switch in the near future. (Oddly, Microsoft executives declined to name them, but Famitsu and the Verge later reported that the games in question were Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Pentiment and Hi-Fi Rush, which is consistent with what was heard I from others). sources.)
Microsoft is not leaving the console market or taking all its games multi-platform, as wildly speculated by popular rumor mongers. And the Xbox Game Pass subscription service (excellent value) is still exclusive to Xbox and PC.
This is basically a non-story. Microsoft was already one of the biggest publishers on PlayStation, especially now that it owns Bethesda and Activision-Blizzard: everything from Skyrim to Call of Duty to Minecraft is technically a Microsoft game. If Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer had announced that last year’s Starfield was headed to the PlayStation 5, say, or Xbox boss Sarah Bond had said that Microsoft was scrapping the idea of with all Xbox-exclusive games, however, that would be a big change. worth writing home about (or, in my case, writing to you about). Instead, this is a small extension of a strategy that Microsoft has been pursuing for years. Every time I spoke to any Microsoft exec for years, they have obediently trotted out a change to the “play the games you want, with the people you want, wherever you want” that showed up again and again in last week’s Xbox. broadcast.
What this announcement did instead was highlight how toxic and outdated the idea of the console wars is. Adults are still too invested in the idea of a console as an identity that the prospect of Microsoft releasing some of the products it spent billions developing or acquiring other, far more popular game machines is enough to stir and stimulate emotions. rush The Xbox community has been on fire for weeks, with people on X posting wartime memes and YouTubers throwing up videos with titles like “Xbox … IT’S OVER!”.
No doubt some of this anger is designed to amplify what happens, but most of it is misguided passion. Fans love the Xbox and the games its studios have brought us over the years, but basically it doesn’t matter what machine a video game is played on, whether it’s a Steam Deck or Switch, Xbox or PlayStation. . Microsoft executives themselves have been saying this for years, and anyone who isn’t listening isn’t listening.
The console wars were nothing more than a marketing ploy. There were times over the years when this was very entertaining though, such as when Sega v Nintendo was producing one of the great business rivalries of the 1990s (remember the tagline “Sega do what Nintendon’t?”) and when Microsoft is always in tears. The Xbox One announcement in 2013 gave Sony plenty of opportunities for fun piss-takes.
But now that culture wars have turned every aspect of modern life, from politics to parkrun, into a competitive nightmare, it’s no longer fun. It’s ridiculous to see people arguing about video game consoles as if it were a matter of life and death.
But even if what we argue about is not the same, how we argue about it is the same. Toxic fandom is a problem everywhere, from football to video games to Star Wars, and its glorified, narcissistic and mean-spirited nature has characterized public discourse since 2016. Bad actors have tried to weaponize video game fandom before and turn on his own. goals that suit their aims, and they will try again.
To bring it back to Xbox: to me, the most problematic thing about Microsoft’s presence in the gaming world is that it is a mega-corporation focused on constant growth. Unlike Sony and Nintendo, it has almost unlimited resources, as its recent acquisitions have shown. He’s still working on a history of acquiring great studios and pushing them through a corporate mindset. I am skeptical of any company having the power to buy the competition in a creative industry where competition is critical to the diversity, innovation and creative value of its output. Microsoft starting to bring Xbox games over to rival consoles really shows that it is no There is no point in monopolizing this space, and that more players can benefit from the results of the many studios that exist. This is positive.
This is not the end of Xbox consoles, then, but let’s use this as an opportunity to end the console manufacturing wars. They really make us all look bad.
What to play
You can tell that Pacific Drive It was inspired by Jeff VanderMeer’s weird fiction, because it’s like playing driving into the exclusion zone from Annihilation in a beat up car. Strange and terrible things await you there, under terrible, stormy skies, and your shambolic vehicle is the only thing standing between you and them. You drive out to the Zone again and again, not knowing what you will see, fixing your car in the garage with what you find and trying to find out more and more what is going on.
It’s all peaceful until suddenly it isn’t, and you’re fleeinga storm while laughing and turning your lights and wipers on and off by hand.
Available on: PC, PS5
Estimated play time: I’m still not sure…
What to read
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If you have idly perused the PlayStation Store, you may have seen the Stroke the animals games – basic, uplifting games where you turn a button to stroke an animal (ie a jpeg of an animal) for a few minutes to get an easy trophy. When Ellie Gibson went in search of what these games were about, she found an unexpected story.
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Peripheral manufacturer PDP is coming out with a new guitar-shaped controller for use with Fortnite’s Festival music game component (and Rock Band 4, for anyone still playing that). Fun fact: Fortnite Festival was developed by Harmonix, the developer behind the original Guitar Hero and Rock Band games.
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If you can make it to Asda, you might be able to buy a copy of last year’s ill-fated FPS wizard Immortal Aveum on PS5 for a quid. It’s not a bad game, but it came out during the busiest gaming year on record and sank without a trace.
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Receiver Group, after going on a wild acquisition spree funded by speculative money from Saudi Arabia that ended abruptly last year, laid off 1,400 people, canceled 29 games and closed several of the studios it bought. Then its CEO made the sure and common statement that layoffs are “something everyone has to go through”.
What to click
Skull and Bones review – yo ho ho and some pockets of fun
Have you ever wanted to play Mario Kart with a live jazz band? In Oklahoma, you can
LGBTQ+ representation in video games lags behind film and television, report finds
Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered Review – a stunning remaster of Lara Croft’s lost arc
Block Questions
Question from reader Paul this week:
“Which games would you go back and score again (if you could), because you were too hard on them at the time, or too lenient?”
I mean, obviously I’m right the first time, every time, Paul. Except, uh, when I’m not. Most of my earliest reviewer gaffes are thankfully hidden in the pages of magazines from a decade or two ago, but some are still public. Readers, may I humbly confirm that I was wrong about Assassin’s Creed 3, which I should have been much more careful about. (I was trapped in a hotel room for a week playing it and I think I got Stockholm syndrome.)
I was also wrong about Sunset Overdrive, which I thought was correct but it’s an interesting curio in hindsight – although I admit its tone is very annoying.
Oh, and if I could review Dark Souls, I’d give it a 10. The version I just played wasn’t quite finished.
If you have a question for a Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us at pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.
