How honourable!
I just couldn't piece it together! For the longest time I was sitting around scratching my dome about how it could be that Sony couldn't read the room and see how all of their recent decisions were stacking them up as the big bad guys of this console generation. I mean there's making some necessary decisions that are hard on the ear, and then there's violently strong-arming the industry to try and force a new standard of premium pricing so that your own price tags don't feel so scandalous. A price tag that, thankfully, the others of the industry seem to be stepping back from. Oh, and doing all of this in the middle of a world wide cost of living crisis isn't exactly a great look either, it must be said. But I've talked about all this before, what could Sony possibly have done since then to solidify my conspiracy theory that Sony themselves are orchestrating their public relations assassination?
It's something that has been bubbling up for a while but is now coming to a starling head. Sony are on the verge of, having officially announced this to be definitely real, bumping up the price of their PS5 console completely arbitrarily. Without offering anything new, without promising any improvements down the line, Sony want to slap another £30 on the price tag worldwide in a bizarre display of equipment becoming more expensive with the years instead of less. This is on top of them making their first party games all £10 more expensive, their competition to the Xbox Game Pass being a lacklustre and incomparable challenger, and the general sense that Sony are alone in this coming push to try and squeeze blood out of their already hurting consumer base. Aside from Square Enix, but they need the money because they just made several increadibly bad major business decisions in recent memory.
The announcement had been speculated on for a while and dismissed as wild speculation probably drummed up by console warriors looking to extrapolate on a worrying trend for hope of discrediting the competitors; but with the recent confirmation of validity I think everyone has become a bit stunned. Not least of all Xbox and Nintendo, who fired up their Twitter accounts to score the easiest PR wins of the generation by simply declaring that their consoles are going to retail for the exact same plan that they were already selling for. If Sony were looking to start a earthquake and hide behind the landslide, they failed and ended up being the lone fool shouting out their sins on the mountainside to the horrified despair of everyone watching. Microsoft probably don't even need to sweat making a choice like that, they can eat any potential cost that Sony is folding on, but Nintendo are really going outside of their comfort zone not immediately jumping on an opportunity to make a quick buck. They've made some real personal growth in the recent years, I'm proud of them.
How many liberties are Sony going to take before someone tells them to stop? I mean, someone who actually matters to the Sony folk, us nobodies are simply leaves blowing in the hurricane to them. Are they going to turn around and up the price of their game subscription service, ensuring it becomes even harder to match Game Pass? Are they going to start upping the tax of games going through their service by another 20%, making it totally untenable for indie devs to release on Playstation at all? Are they going to go through your back catalogue, spot every first party game that they've subsequently raised the price of since you bought it, and send you an invoice to make up the change? Ridiculous suppositions all, but so was price hiking their console several years after its launch. There's no such thing as 'too far' for Sony in their bold, brave, new face for them.
So I got to thinking about why it could possibly be that the golden boys of the last generation are so eager to set themselves up as today's pariahs; and I think I may have landed on the golden ticket. You see, I think that Playstation is on it's villain arc; on purpose! No I don't consider this one of those yin and yang scenarios where peace must always be balanced with chaos, not for fear of some great calamity but just because the natural balance of the earth unconsciously shifts our reality into equilibrium like that. I think that Sony have made the conscious decision to position themselves as adversaries to the consumer and the hard won market lead they spent eight years securing. Because otherwise they would absolutely moronic for their recent conduct and I refuse to believe a company as successful as Playstation would abide stupidity. Heck, they're a Japanese company; those loathe indolence of all kind!
Mayhap it's a question of honourable rivalry between Sony and Microsoft; wherein Sony saw that Microsoft took so many missteps in the last generation and deeply feels for their plight to get back in the running. In such a supposition, I might conclude that Sony are giving up their lead so that Microsoft can maintain on equal footing to them; maybe in the knowledge that equal competition encourages the most tangible innovation. But nah, that's starting to sound like the moral of a Hallmark movie; surely there's a much more cynical heart beating at the centre of all this. And I suspect the name of that organ might be something along the line of 'exit strategy'; because anyway I look at it, that's what I think Sony is trying to pave the way towards.
As the world is slowly moving far away from physical content and ownership, despite the mad cawing off old fuddy-duddies like me, the question has come up again and again of what Microsoft and Sony are going to do. Plenty of times the title 'The last generation' has been waved; which is more than a little alarmist given that the prohibitive price of PC gaming necessitates the development of more affordable consumer consoles; but that a coming deadline might be approaching the home console market is a possibility. Perhaps Sony are more than susceptive of this eventuality, and has weighed up the value of their current market dominance with the potential of an early adoption to the next stage of home system gaming. No, I'm not talking about WEB3 crap; I mean the actual future of gaming.
I can't pretend to know what that is right now, but Google were certainly edging in the right direction for what Stadia was purporting to be, rather than for the disappointment it ended up being before it's 'back burner' status that it has suffered for the past year or so. Playstation, however, probably know very clearly what it is that they want to shift their business model towards, and maybe getting quick bucks off the current market whilst it's nearing it's zenith is the best move for the future. Maybe every penny of Sony's capital is going towards a brand new venture that is going to ape the next evolution of gaming before its clear to anyone else. What else would you expect from market leaders who have been ahead of the consumer demands for nearly a full decade until the PS5 launched? I'm not calling Sony's recent antics a death spiral, not yet. I want to wait and see the picture swim more into focus.
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