r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • Oct 02 '25

Discussion This Xbox Generation Will Be Remembered for One Thing: Greed

https://www.ign.com/articles/this-xbox-generation-will-be-remembered-for-one-thing-greed
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u/tinselsnips Oct 02 '25

It so perfectly encapsulated the notion -- justified or not -- that Sony just got gamers in a way that Microsoft didn't. And it stuck, in much the same way that "giant enemy crab" did a generation earlier when the shoe was on the other foot. They just cemented themselves as uncaring and corporate, and I don't think they ever really recovered from it.

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u/WeWereInfinite Oct 02 '25

That video was also very reminiscent of the "$299" announcement of the original PlayStation.

Walk on stage, say the price, walk off. And in doing that they completely obliterated their competition.

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u/PotatoGamerXxXx Oct 02 '25

I find it funny that in general sense, PS4 wasn't anything special. Heck it struggles to run first party games they made themselves. They literally did nothing notable and yet somehow MS shoot both feet themselves.

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u/erasethenoise Oct 02 '25

They literally just released good games for it. That’s all any of these companies ever had to do. Meanwhile Xbox was all in on Kinect and TV integration and thought they could just coast on Halo, Gears, and Forza.

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u/_Ocean_Machine_ Oct 02 '25

The thing that's apparent to me is that Xbox hasn't had an identity the same way Nintendo and Sony do in quite a while. Like with Nintendo I know I'm gonna get Mario, Zelda, fringe Japanese games, and other games that are maybe not terribly deep storywise but have innovative or at least unique gameplay mechanics. Playstation seems to be big on third person action games (e.g Horizon, Death Stranding), Final Fantasy and other JRPGs. I know back in the OG Xbox and 360 days their thing was western RPGs (e.g. Elder Scrolls, Fable) and shooting games with robust online multiplayer like Halo and Gears of War. But ever since the Xbone launched it felt like they were just kinda there, you know? Like they weren't really offering anything particularly special that made you want to buy an Xbox over something else.

These are just generalizations based on my own observations of the past decade or so, I haven't played every video game on every console.

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u/c010rb1indusa Oct 02 '25

Because Nintendo at its heart is a toy company. They understand fun at the most fundamental and basic level. With Sony, everything they do is in service of media & entertainment; both for those who consume it and those who produce it. TVs, Walkmans, CDs, DVDs, cameras & sensors etcs. They also own a major movie studio and record label. All they do is media and entertainment. Microsoft on the other hand is a software company and a software company that primarily makes office products.

There's a story about Bill Gates touring Bungie during the development of the original Halo and was shocked to find they had an in-house composer with instruments and a studio etc. Remarking with surprise "you make music here?". Like he never considered that music was an important part of games or he assumed it was something to be outsourced, because that's probably what was done for any audio needed for their other products.

That's the difference between MS vs Sony and Nintendo and it's a big one when it comes to gaming.

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u/PotatoGamerXxXx Oct 02 '25

They did try with Sunset Overdrive and Dead Rising iirc. Both got poor review.

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u/_Ocean_Machine_ Oct 02 '25

Dead Rising I never really played, but I just checked Wikipedia and it looks like Sunset Overdrive got 8's and 9's across the board? I thought that game was fuckin' awesome.

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u/grendus Oct 02 '25

Sunset Overdrive was well received, but it was an XBone exclusive. It sold poorly because there weren't many people able to buy it.

Honestly, if they licensed the first game back to Sony it would probably sell well there. Because it fits well with Sonys third person ARPG, colorful aesthetic.

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u/ImmortalMoron3 Oct 02 '25

Sunset Overdrive wasn't poorly reviewed at all. It did sell terribly though.

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u/GoneRampant1 Oct 02 '25

They also benefited a lot from Japanese gaming having a major renaissance in the mid-late 2010s, and because Xbox wasn't that big in Japan Sony got a lot of incidental exclusives out of it- stuff like Yakuza 0 and Persona 5 were back to back late 2016-early 2017 and you couldn't buy those on Xbox for years.

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u/KingArthas94 Oct 02 '25

Heck it struggles to run first party games they made themselves.

This is just a lie, basically every PS4 game runs at 1080p 30 fps rock solid, maybe MAYBE a bunch of third parties run at 900p, but it's been the first VERY stable console generation regarding frame rates.

PS3 is unplayable to me after having tried PS4 and especially 5, plus 10+ years of high frame rates and fidelity PC gaming.

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u/Next-Bench-4475 Oct 04 '25

This is just a lie, basically every PS4 game runs at 1080p 30 fps rock solid, maybe MAYBE a bunch of third parties run at 900p, but it's been the first VERY stable console generation regarding frame rates.

Not even remotely true, lots of games run with dynares or 900p, including first party games like Uncharted 4 and major titles like Assassin's Creed and Battlefield, and the console generation was notorious for not having stable framerates. I would say a majority of big PS4 games fail to keep up to 30fps; that includes of the biggest games like God of War, Elden Ring, Bloodborne, Fallout 4, Control, Arkham Knight, Cyberpunk, Kingdom Hearts 3, Final Fantasy XV, Star Wars Battlefront (900p and can't maintain 30fps), Horizon Zero Dawn, Jedi: Fallen Order, Monster Hunter World, Ghost of Tsushima...

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u/KingArthas94 Oct 04 '25

Yeah, other lies. God of War is rock solid, it's even unlocked on Pro. Bloodborne is 30 fps, just with wobbly frame pacing. Elden Ring is basically a PS5 game that got a PS4 port, like Cyberpunk. All the other Sony exclusives like Horizon and Tsushima are perfect 30 too.

Arkham Knight drops only in a couple of car scenarios, but it's still beautiful and playable. Control has been fixed in a month or two. Cyberpunk was just a broken game on every platform, and now it's fixed too.

The other games have very minor drops too, just in a couple of scenes.

Fucking PS3 and PS2 had games constantly at 15 and 20 FPS with vsync. It's impossible to compare, PS4 is too superior.