We all have our favorites. Favorite food, favorite city, favorite movie, favorite band, favorite game, and favorite console (of course there is more stuff but I was just giving you some examples). I love video games. To be more specific, I love pure action adult games with excellent looking graphics. I apologize to all those who love indie games and or games that look cartoonish, but that's just not my thing. To be honest, I don't understand how so many of twenty-plus-year-old play games like Cuphead, Zelda, Mario games, Untitled Goose, and more. Not saying they are bad games and don't have challenging missions, but the graphics of those games and how the characters appear and behave makes them look very kiddish. I bought myself 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild' because I needed to know why this game is considered a masterpiece and one of the best games on Nintendo Switch. Not gonna lie, I was very excited as the game was loading and about to start. Then after playing it for more than an hour and after watching how our player, Link, runs and fights in the game, I was like this game is so cartoonist. Maybe the story and the action might get better later in the game, but the way Link runs and all the creatures that I have to fight in this game had me lose all the interest from it. Again, I am not saying Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a bad or a boring game. The point is Zelda and all the other games with cartoonish graphics are just not for me.
I'm one of those who loves his rock music, plays guitar, goes to the gym, travels, and plays games with stories that are just as bad-ass as most of the action shows and movies we watch on Netflix and HBO. For my playable character, I want my character to look like a grown-up bad-ass man or a woman and act like a grown-up. Wouldn't mind having a side character that is a teenage kid, or I wouldn't mind playing with the kid every now and then. I just don't want to play with kids as the main characters from the games. Graphics don't have to be as real as movies or shows we watch on Netflix and HBO, but they should look somewhat realistic and not be full of glowing colors. The other important thing I care about in a story mode game or in any game is the combat. Fighting style and moves should feel real, smooth, and painful. The combat mode in Zelda: Breath of the Wild is below average in my opinion. When I hit my enemies in Zelda, it feels like I just poked my enemy down. Hit doesn't feel like a hit in the game. You understand what I'm trying to say? There is no power in the attack we put on our enemy. Plus, I don't understand the concept of hitting anyone with a chicken bone.
The story mode games that I enjoy playing are; The Witcher 3, Shadow of War, Batman Arkham Knight, The Last of Us, God of War, and somewhat Gears 5. I haven't played games like Marvel's Spiderman, Horizon Zero Dawn, Bloodborne, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and all the Halo games on Xbox yet, but after seeing the graphics and combat style of those games in short videos (mostly trailers on YouTube), I'm gonna have a blast playing those games for sure. I just need to finish playing one of the four games I'm currently playing on my Xbox and PlayStation before I start playing Spiderman and the other games I mentioned above. Currently, I'm playing The Witcher 3 and Shadow of War on my Xbox, and God of War and The Last of Us on PlayStation. Okay, Dawer. Why are we talking about the action story mode games that you like to play? Why are we not talking about how and why Xbox can never beat PlayStation in terms of selling console units?
Half of the games I just mentioned up there are PlayStation exclusives. Almost all of the games, except Gears 5 and Halo games are all available on PlayStation. As a consumer, what do we all appreciate the most? Convenience and accessibility to as many products and services as possible. PlayStation has a lot more exclusives to offer than Xbox, and their exclusives are really really good. In my opinion, there isn't even a question who has the better exclusive and it pains me to say it but PlayStation has a hundred times better games than Xbox. Yes, Xbox systems are more powerful than PlayStation's but the graphics difference between the latest Xbox (One X) and the latest PlayStation (Pro) is not that much. When I upgraded from Xbox One S to One X, I was honestly disappointed. I didn't see that much of an upgrade and paid twice more for my One X than I did for my One S. When the difference between PlayStation and Xbox in graphics and power isn't that much, and when one console offers more games and exclusives than the other one for the same price, people will buy the one with more exclusives.
"Immerse yourself in a deep library of more than 100 high-quality console and PC games. Join the fun in new games or catch up on a recent hit. With Xbox Game Pass, you always have something new to play." This is what it says on Xbox.com in the Xbox Game Pass overview. PlayStation Now does offer 800 plus games, while Xbox Game Pass is currently offering 246 games on console and 191 games on PC. Yes, the majority of the games on the console from Game Pass are the same as the games offered on PC. In total, Xbox Game Pass is offering 416 games per the Game Pass list on Xbox.com. Even though PS Now has twice more games to offer than Xbox Game Pass does on console and PC combined, the major difference between the two streaming services is mentioned in the overview of the Xbox Game Pass. We the players get to catch up on recent hits with Xbox Game Pass. There are a decent amount of games on Xbox Game Pass that were released in 2019. Games like Metro Exodus, Devil May Cry 5, The Outer Worlds, Remanent from the Ashes, Rage 2, Xbox's exclusive Gears 5 which was available day one on Xbox Game Pass, A Plague Tale of Innocence, Blair Witch, and few more recent games, were all released in 2019.
It is because of the recent games and all of the Xbox exclusives being available day one why Game Pass has won over so many of us gamers. To be honest, I wouldn't have subscribed to Game Pass if all the games on the list were older than 2018. Yes, some of us want to play some older classics and games from 2010 to 2017 every now and then, but paying $10 or $15 a month to play games that are out for a while is not a good deal. However, some of the older games that are available to be played on Xbox Game Pass are pretty big-time games, such as; Batman Arkham Knight, The Witcher 3, Grand Theft Auto 5, Halo Master Chief Collection, Final Fantasy 15, and more. Game Pass also recently added Yakuza 0 to its list. Yakuza 0 was only available on PlayStation 4 and PC until February 26. Now, Xbox players who already have Game Pass can play this game for no extra cost.
So far I have only noticed one 2019 game on the PlayStation Now list and that is F1 2019. There might be a couple more 2019 games on PS Now, but I have only noticed one. Yes, PS Now does offer 800 games but 500 to 600 of them were released before 2018. Also, PlayStation doesn't let its own brand new exclusives release day one on PS Now. Xbox Game Pass subscribers actually had access to Gears 5 four days before it was released or available to be physically sold at GameStop and other stores that sell games. It might seem like that PS Now has better annual prices than Xbox Game Pass, but there is a way where you could get one year of Game Pass Ultimate for $75, two years for $135, and three years for $195. You just have to subscribe to Xbox live gold first for somewhere between one to three years and then get the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $15 a month. New users could get Xbox Game Pass Ulitmate for $1 a month. Yes, even after all that, PS Now prices are still slightly better than Xbox. But then again, for few extra bucks, you get newer games on Game Pass than you do on PS Now. Having a decent amount of new games worth $50 to $60 each on Xbox Game Pass makes Xbox Game Pass a better game streaming service than PlayStation Now and there is no debate about that.
There is no debate for now, but I honestly think PlayStation in the near future will apply the same strategy on PlayStation Now as Xbox does with Game Pass. Sony PlayStation will start adding newer games and their brand new exclusives from day one to PS Now. They have too! They know that they can't continue to do what they are doing with their streaming service at the moment. It would be as if Apple came out with an iPhone that has a touch screen and Samsung sitting there saying "our customers don't need a phone that has a touch-screen option." So by the time PlayStation 5 comes out, Sony would have a different outlook for PS Now. The quality of games on PS Now and Xbox Game Pass will be practically the same before both console giants begin the new generation of console gaming.
With PlayStation having better exclusives and most likely upgrading their PS Now streaming service before the new consoles come out later in the year, what other advantage does Sony PlayStation have over the Microsoft Xbox? PlayStation has history on its side.
Xbox One which was expected to fail from the start kinda did fail. So far, a total of 41 million Xbox One units have been sold worldwide, and that is even two years after Microsoft released the most powerful console with Xbox One X. According to other sources, Xbox One has sold somewhere between 46 and 47 million units. Still, that is not good. When I saw that Xbox One hadn't even sold half of what it sold with Xbox 360, I thought to myself 'why'? To be honest, Xbox One S and One X are really not that bad. They are really good. I enjoyed playing my games on Xbox One S and now I'm having a blast playing on Xbox One X. I prefer playing on both Xbox One S and X over PlayStation 4, even with PlayStation having better exclusives.
As I mentioned above, the one main reason why Xbox One failed so badly was that not much was expected from it, to begin with. During the days when Xbox and PlayStation were both making pitches for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 respectively, PlayStation outperformed Xbox in every single presentation. Not going to go in detail here, but in short, PlayStation 4 was seen as much more of a convenient console with a better price than what Xbox was offering for its new console at the time. In less than a year, it was proven true that PlayStation 4 was a superior console than Xbox One.
Another thing that PlayStation has an advantage over Xbox is the Japanese market. Per International Data Corporation, Microsoft Xbox had sold about 0.3% of its total Xbox One units in Japan by the summer of 2019. It is astonishing that Microsoft couldn't even manage to sell one percent of its Xbox One units in Japan. What does this tell us? Either Japanese don't like American products to take over their own products, or Microsoft just doesn't make the right games for the gamers in Japan. Or maybe it is the combination of both. PlayStation, Nintendo, and even Sega are three consoles that Japanese gamers would prefer over Xbox any given day.
For Xbox, beating PlayStation in the next generation will be an extremely difficult task for everyone involved with the Xbox team. In my opinion, for Xbox Series X to sell more units than PS5 in the coming years will depend on Xbox fans. We the fans and Xbox-loyalists, all need to demand ground-breaking first-party games from Xbox and to have Microsoft to go above and beyond with what they have to offer with their services. Just like what they did with Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft can't let their guard down, and we, the fans, must make sure that they work super hard to bring out the best with Xbox Series X.
Comments
Post a Comment