I think that the way games are stagnating the line between cross gen / next gen will become thinner every gen ...to the point that eventually we dont even have next gen only games that much.. or only really at the end of the generation ... tales from my ass of course.. but well... it seems the industry is moving this way.
yeah. I mean, when you think about it; this Gen, devs will by making only one true Next-Gen game
1. first game, cross Gen with the old gen
2. second game, the only true "current Gen"
3. third game, cross Gen with next Gen
it creates this weird miss match, like consoles generations and devs are not in synchrony.
what's the solution, to have 10 years generations or even longer?
If I have to guess.. and only guess.. I think MS will try to position this new console as the better machine to play multiplats, Is the best they can try to do in my opinion.
going for a handled/ hybrid console could be the more nuanced approach. but Xbox has been always about making the most powerful hardware (so, that approach is the most expected one).
the issue is that devs clearly can't keep up with technology.
what is interesting, is how these two companies talk about the challenges:
Xbox blames external factors while Sony says they need to be more efficient and the need to re-evaluate how to operate to meet the expectation from the people who love AAA single player games and the approach to GaaS production.
is not like these external factors are not real, but those factors are not the reason Xbox is in this situation.. what's is really scary, based in the posture from Phil when he says that "it's about mobile, that without mobile the business is not viable" or something to that effect. is the fact that there is like a 10% chance for Xbox (the gaming division) to totally implode. (similar to what happened to embracer)
Phil is acting like mobile is the new frontier, the unexplored market but mobile is already a mature market.
MS failed at gaining market share from consoles
MS falied at capitalizing from windows ownership.
And Mobile is already taken by Google and Apple.
streaming will be complentary at best.
I'm saying this because it dosen't matter what their strategy is... is not about the strategy; it's about the execution. and MS/Xbox's execution keeps sucking asss.