With Xbox hemorrhaging yet more employees and studios amid a "reset" plan that will see thousands cut by the end of the fiscal year, even former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden hopes Microsoft can get this train back on the rails.
Speaking with Kotaku, Layden recalls the "halcyon days" of the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation, back when Sony and Microsoft were neck-and-neck like "Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier." In his view, this type of competitive relationship not only drew a lot of attention to gaming, it also benefited the industry at large by stoking improvements to both platforms.
"Everybody had team blue or team green, whichever it was, that they were supporting," Layden says. "And it was so vibrant that it elevated the entire gaming industry."
More to the point, "both platforms pushed the other to be better," he adds. "I think a certain energy around innovation, a certain desire towards differentiation, these things become a bit muted in a world with one dominant player."
That being the case, Layden says, "I would like to see Xbox get some of its mojo back."
PlayStation and Xbox have been the clearest direct competitors in the console space for several generations. Nintendo was the biggest player in the early years, and did butt heads with Sony with the Nintendo 64 and GameCube especially, but it has since settled into its own rhythm. It's not that Nintendo doesn't have a huge presence in games today; it just doesn't fight over the same turf nearly as often as PlayStation and Xbox do.
The Nintendo Switch 2 is, in many ways, not running the same race as the PS5 and Xbox Series X, to say nothing of the expected PS6 and Xbox Project Helix. Nintendo leans much more heavily on first-party titles, and differences in its hardware can limit its third-party offerings as well, though we do continue to see games ported to the Switch 2 and Nintendo's even bagged The Duskbloods as a FromSoftware exclusive.
We discussed this with veteran games analyst Mat Piscatella closer to the launch of the Switch 2. "Ultimately, yes, Nintendo is its own thing," he said at the time. "Its sales patterns are a little bit different, the way that consumers will buy Nintendo devices in conjunction with a PlayStation or an Xbox or a PC." However, Nintendo might not be as different "as Nintendo themselves might believe," he added, pointing out the growing importance of mega-hit games like the Minecrafts and Fortnites of the world.
Layden actually discussed the importance of exclusives last year, arguing that, "If Mario starts appearing on PlayStation, that's the apocalypse."
All of this is to say that the shrinking of Xbox is a much bigger deal to Sony and PlayStation. I'd wager that the last thing anyone wants right now, as PlayStation pronounces the death of physical games after a profoundly lean generation of game releases, is for Sony to have even more control over the direction of console gaming.
In separate remarks, Layden recently argued that Xbox needs to pick between its position as a platform and its role as a publisher, again reiterating the importance of exclusive games. "I wasn't making games so I could steal market share from EA or steal market share from Activision. My job was to make games that made the pie bigger, and my opportunity was in growing it out," he said.
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