For all the many faults with Xbox as it has been run there is at least on gratis that they've always held- they are run by a human being- at least for the time being. Spencer isn't just personable, but he's an active stakeholder in the business that he runs, acquiring a platform that he wants to play on just as much as his various customers do- and that counts for a lot when fighting the 'out of touch' allegations. I don't know if Sony has ever had that as they've traded across a conga line of AI-generated business suits with equally outlandish views in what other humans even are let alone what they do- and these past few weeks alone have done a startlingly effective job of demonstrating how three different generations of these ghouls fail the Turing test.
Chris Deering led the computer company through some of their formative years, 1995 to 2005, during which they managed to wrangle some of their most important status defining victories over Nintendo and stand as a competitor in their own right. And yet during a recent podcast the man really let his ass be shown when speaking about recent lay offs which he insists have nothing to do with Greed. Yeah sure, man- afterall it's just adjusting for the recent over-hiring right? But then- I wander what emotion was ruling various gaming companies when they tried to overstock their staff to take advantage of a short-term global measure? What would you could opportunistic short-sightedness like that then, hmm? Maybe brief spouts of abject madness?
The worst part was Deering's proposed advice to the laid-off. He said they should 'move somewhere cheap and live on the beach for a year'- which is just... wow, this man wouldn't survive a week in the real world, would he? First off 'move somewhere cheap' is just wild. Because 'Somewhere cheap' for a tech company job typically out-of-state, which would just disqualify you from the jobs you are trying to secure- and good luck trying to buy yourself back into the state after the market has calmed down when you haven't worked for a year. As for 'living by the beach'- I don't know what this man lives off of but most people can't afford to sustain themselves on savings for an entire year on a video game developer's budget- guy must think they're movie stars or something!
But that's just the start of it. We've had to deal with Jim Ryan's reign over Sony which mandated the proliferation of Live Service games in the mad gamble that one would become a smash hit- which has led to him literally eating so much crow that Sony scored the dubious title of biggest video game flop in history thanks to the horrendous performance of Concord- dead in 2 weeks. Trying to squeeze a camel through the eye of a needle, Ryan had to have his plans stepped over time and time again leading to a legacy that is remembered largely for detestation than for his brilliant strategy- and the idiot probably hopped off to his next position on a Golden Parachute because the upper echelons of this industry is run by clueless vermin in desperate need of extermination.
Which brings us to the PS5 Pro, where the savings are passed down to no-one. The mid-generation upgrade which is meant to bridge the gap between what this generation has offered and what the next generation will aspire to has managed to hit the very soul of 'out of touch' with their reveal presentation. Bizarrely Sony themselves admitted that performance was the highest priority for most gamers out there- with the choice usually being actively taken for games to play on performance mode over quality mode- before debuting a console almost specifically designed to shoot for as high fidelity as possible whilst forgoing potential improvements to raw performance. Oh sure- we've got virtual frames now- but if this can achieve anything close to Path Tracing I will eat my hat. This is a minimal step towards what players want.
And it's important to establish how minimal this has been in improvements so that you fully accept the absolute aghast with this the audience suffered the reveal of the price. $699 in America- and it is cheapest by far in America. Over here in ol' blighty- land of the all around poor being trampled on by rich nationals? Yeah, we're being charged £699- which is roughly about $900 in conversion. In Canada they're looking at north of a $1000. Cry about import tariffs all you want- this is utterly unassailable to most level-headed on the planet and feels driven from a place of pure malice. Afterall you're looking at an extra 80 for the disk drive (which is apparently selling out- showing you were priories lie) and another 30 for the bloody vertical stand! The game doesn't even come with the pro controller- so that's another 100+ dollars for full package!
The general consensus appears to place this at the feet of the current interim COO Totoki and some sort of insane chase of margins so tight that the Playstation pro is literally a backwards investment in the medium. Honestly, at that price I currently have a PC that is one graphics card upgrade away from being a superior choice- and I only haven't upgraded because of the headache of switching the card around. That Set-up would last a heck of a lot longer than the 3 or so years that Sony expect this console to last whilst they work on the PS6 to replace it entirely. The market for a console like this is two fold- either the stupid or the rich will flock to this- and that latter audience I could care less about- they can buy whatever they want but the former audience- this is going to be a drain of their trust for the console market that I think Sony aren't fully cognizant of.
Already we commonly ask what the purpose of the console market is in the modern age and as the years tick by that purpose appears to be drying up. They're no longer a cheaper alternative, they're no longer as seamless an alternative. Games are slowly starting to be put out as a more consistent quality on PC and Console, (Except for those by Rockstar) how long we be able to justify these excesses for the way things are going. Xbox are too far up their own ass to take advantage of this, I expect their pro console to be only marginally better- maybe they'll throw in the pro-controller seeing that's it's not as tech-packed as Sony's equivalent. Either way, this generation might be shaping up to be something of a wash with no real standout moment- and that is a crying shame. Thanks Sony.
No comments:
Post a Comment