PlayStation and Xbox need each other right now | Kaser Focus

After a week of anticipation, we’ve finally gotten the update on Xbox’s future from the official podcast. Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond and Matt Booty got together to more or less say that only four Xbox games are going multiplatform at the present moment. The company is also still making consoles for the foreseeable future. All in all, Xbox only disrupted the status quo a fraction as much as they could have. But between Spencer’s remarks and PlayStation’s recent earnings report, I can’t help but think both of our major console companies could stand to disrupt it a little bit more.

The four games that Xbox is offering to the other consoles as tribute were selected, according to Spencer, because they had achieved all they were going to on Xbox’s platforms — “reached their full potential,” to use his words. And I couldn’t help but draw a comparison to Sony president Hiroki Totoki in the company’s recent financial Q&A. Totoki said that PlayStation is going to be more aggressive in pursuing better profit margins and noted that first-party titles only benefit these days by being multiplatform. He also made a remark about how games used to primarily sell consoles, which echoes Matt Booty saying, “It used to be that the platform was the biggest thing.” There was a curious harmony there.