Hold my piss-filled pint glass

If you’re of my vintage, you’ll remember the time of “The Big Three”. Every year, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo would duke it out to be the place to play video games. Now? Well. Two of them keep tripping over themselves to try and outshit one another’s pants, while Nintendo is in the background propping up the industry. State of Play? More like state of this fucking thing.

The last few years have been rough for the industry. I don’t need to retell the stories that have been told hundreds of times, but alas, video games have been having a right old time of it. Or, more accurately, the people who make them. The good people. Not the bigwigs. While the industry is fraught, you’d think it's a good opportunity to try to make the hobby as enticing as possible, but Xbox and PlayStation keep striving to make it anything but.

It’s been so long now that I can’t remember when this started, but Xbox certainly opened the gates by monopolising the industry then laying it all off person by person. The biggest buyout in video game history led to nothing but closed-down studios and the annihilation of generational talent. GG, lads.

PlayStation took a risk and sacked off its well-regarded single-player action-adventure games, to focus on live service games. They released their new darling Concord, shut it down two weeks later and closed the studio shortly after. All other games got canned except for Marathon that finally released but not before getting dragged for stealing artwork.

Xbox then popped up again to lay off thousands more people, all while video gamer’s best buddy Big Phil Spencer slid out the back door and we never heard from him again.

Not for wanting to be outdone in ruining people’s lives, PlayStation closed a couple more studios. They then decided it would be a good idea to force the use of a PSN account to play online PC games, which went down like a sack full of shit. The upshot of this was to block half the world from playing Helldivers 2. Now I’m not big into business, but that felt like a bad thing to do.

Xbox, at the pinnacle of AI being universally hated, said it was looking at getting AI to spaff out games for us to play, because nothing says “we value and respect your time” more than filling your platform with half-baked, theft-driven, computer hallucinations.

PlayStation then announced the death of physical media. Yeah, that just came out of nowhere. It’s been naturally moving that way, but no one thought it would be this soon. But I guess PlayStation thought it would be best to announce it at the peak of their prime.

Contrary to this, Xbox announced a way to preserve physical media. The fuck off elephant in the room is that this is prepping them for an all-digital future, but at least they have xCloud! Shortly after this announcement, they turned the gun on their own foot, and unloaded a full magazine. It was announced that cloud streaming is being capped at as little as 5 hours a month, or you get a whole 15 hours a month if you pay for the most expensive tier of Game Pass - a service that has become so convoluted that it requires a degree to figure out what benefits you get from it.

PlayStation then said we’re all fucking morons because we wrongly assumed the games we bought on their marketplace weren’t actually bought, despite pressing the “BUY NOW”, button. Nope, they’re leased, not owned, but of course we know that because we’re all reasonable consumers.

Oh, and while these two have been running the shitty stick relay, console prices have gone up nearly 2x the price since they launched nearly 6 years ago. It’s a real bloody head-scratcher why the industry is in the pits.

So, as console generations go, it’s been one continuous fart sound. The only thing that could make it worse is if Xbox and PlayStation wash their hands of this gen, and announce a new £1,000 console that plays all the games no one can afford to make, lets you stream them for 15 minutes a year, and lets you rent games from a digital marketplace that you’re beholden to the prices of. But they wouldn’t do that, would they? Right.

If they had any sense they’d kick the PS6 and Project Helix, whatever the fuck that is, into the nether. Of course, events indicate they don’t have any sense. They’re bumbling around trying to chase the high of that Covid-19 dollar, and stepping on every rake laid before them.

It’s been fascinating to see the reaction to Xbox and PlayStation over the last few years. The genuine ebb and flow of video game enthusiasts leaning from one side to the other. One week praising a decision only for it to be overturned the following week to make you look like a cunt. But it’s got to the point now where I’m genuinely unsure what’s next. Is there a PS6 around the corner? Will anyone buy it seeing as the PS5 has 1 ½ exclusives? Will there even be an Xbox in 5 years? It’s a weird old time, and it would be nice to see some industrial stability, but when every news week is as bleak as my retirement prospects, it’s hard to see it happening.

But at least we’ve got a fancy Zelda remake to look forward to.