While Sony has revealed quite a bit of information regarding its plans for the future of Sony Interactive Entertainment, and by extension, PlayStation, during its recent business update, the company has also revealed its thoughts about the possibility of Microsoft leaving the console business behind. SIE president and CEO Hideaki Nishino, when asked whether the possibility of not having an Xbox to compete against in the future was good or bad for the company, responded by saying that a certain level of competition is good for the industry.
“So, we think that competition in the business is healthy and pushes us to innovate,” said Nishino (via Pure Xbox). “There are multiple participants who together drive the overall gaming industry, and while there are new engagement models being explored, we ultimately think this is a good thing. However, as I mentioned earlier, we are confident on our current strategy. There isn’t an urgent need for us to pivot, but we will continue to monitor play patterns appropriately as required.”
During the same “Fireside Chat”, Nishino also spoke about a number of other things regarding the future of PlayStation. Responding to one question about PlayStation, Nishino spoke about how, while cloud streaming is an interesting technology where progress is constantly being made, the lack of control the company has over network stability remains a sticking point. Ultimately, Nishino notes that the technology ends up being more expensive for the company than just selling games in a more traditional way.
“Cloud streaming is progressing well from a technical standpoint, as we have demonstrated with [our] offerings, but end-to-end network stability is not in our control,” Nishino said. “And the higher cost per playtime compared to the traditional console model remains a challenge.”
“Cloud gaming is increasingly providing an additional option for players to access content, but our belief is that the majority of players continue to want to experience gaming through local execution without dependency on network conditions. And PS5 and PS5 Pro have validated this thesis, I believe.”
In the meantime, Microsoft seems to be following a trend where it wants to further merge its Windows and Xbox businesses even closer together than they have been in the past. While just about every console released by Microsoft has made use of Windows technologies under the hood to some extent – the Xbox was named after its use of DirectX graphics technology, after all – the combination is seemingly being taken further with the recent unveiling of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X.
To that end, Microsoft has reportedly also halted the development of its own in-house handheld gaming system, opting to instead have the same developers working on improving the gaming features on Windows 11. The same reports also indicate that we might still see at least one more Xbox console from Microsoft. However, the future for the company seems to revolve more around its Xbox Play Anywhere branding, where “everything is an Xbox”, thanks to services like Game Pass and Cloud Streaming.