Exclusives make a console superior? What about the fact that PlayStation Plus offers gamers nearly $40 of free content a month? Or the fact that the PlayStation community does a far superior job at supporting indie titles? Get out of here and play with your controller that still takes double a (aa) batteries dude.

"Exclusives make a console superior?"

Yes. They do. Its laughable that you even have to ask this. even your fellow PS fanboy bretherin will agree that exclusives are what makes a console great.

"What about the fact that PlayStation Plus offers gamers nearly $40 of free content a month?"

Doesnt mean much if you already bought the good ones...and what of the rest of the shovel wear? hardly worth the asking price, is it? Besides I have been an XBL subscriber for seven and a half years. They still have my custom because they have been a great service...talk to me when you have been a PSN subscriber for that long...I dont even own PSN anymore but I have probably spent more money on than you. Thats why sony built the next gen X360. They want people like me spending the kind of money I spend on Xbox on the PS4.

And FYI,I have always payed to play online on console. And given that most of my gaming time is spent on halo, BF, two forzas (FM5 and FH2), titanfall neverwinter and on PC; firefall, star citizen and asseto corsa, its pretty obvious that I spend most of my gaming time playing online with friends. And XBL is the best place for that. Even if MS threw a shitload of indies at me every month I doubt I would actually have the time to play them all anyway. I just about get round to playing the free games I get with gold. Thats good for you if you like that sort of thing though. Not like you are actually paying for these games and supporting the devs yourself now is it? but whatever helps you sleep at night, hipster. Supporting indies does not make you more of a gamer than anybody else. Get over yourself, mate.

Which brings me to....
"Or the fact that the PlayStation community does a far superior job at supporting indie titles?"

If that the case how come battlefield and COD dominate PS sales charts all the time too when the odd big AAA exclusive doest take the top PS spot for a week..before handing it back to COD, madden, fifa...just like..*gasps* Xbox.

"Get out of here and play with your controller that still takes double a (aa) batteries dude."

I use the official rechargeable pack. I never have to swap out anything...so what was your point again? such a lame and cringe worthy comment. I own an xbox..this is an xbox thread (maybe you should read the article title seeing as YOU forgot where YOU are)...You dont own an xbox..so STFU and GTFO...along with any other internet acronym that involves you shutting the hell up, with your nonsense. lol, you dumb kid!

No it doesn't, you kidding? PS4 has more highly rated games than Xbox and more AAA games as well.

I recently bought some panasonic eneloop batteries which came with a quick charge station.

I am amazed how long they last. Easily over a week gaming every day. And when they eventually die they charge fully in 2 hours.

Love it.

Rechargeable batteries, a 4 pack with a charger, can be had for around $10. When one set is dead, throw them on the charger and put in the fresh set. You never need a usb cable and you don't have to buy/repair a controller like if a proprietary battery fails to charge. It is clearly better than internal.

AA batteries are rather archaic in today's electronic devices outside maybe remotes. Almost everything like this has internal rechargeable batteries. Ease of replacement is a thing in Xbox's favor, but you can also replace the batteries in a DualShock with nothing more than a screwdriver and a $7 battery brought from Amazon, and about 10 minutes of time.

The thing is though, the batteries in the DS don't go bad for a very long time. While anecdotal, I have 7 DS3's, 2 being sixaxis' I got on launch day, 2 DS3's I got when they became available ~6 years ago, and 3 more I've brought more than 2-3 years ago. Every single one can hold a charge for more than 10 hours on even the most demanding game. FOr less controller intensive games it can go 15-20 hours and can be recharged in about an hour. I have to replace one now however, but that's because the D-Pad keeps registering inputs when not in use, and cleaning it didn't help, although I may just change the contact sheet.

I honestly don't know why people defend this AA batteries thing. Instead of defending it for what I assume is console preference, make a fuss about it, and get MS to include the Play n' Charge kit with the controller itself instead of charging money as an additional purchase. Then, if you want an additional replacement, you can go out and buy one.

Xbox revenue was down 24% YOY, not Microsoft revenue. Microsoft YOY revenue was up by 6% I think. But you are right that profits and revenue are two different things.

These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse

Contractual agreements are not the same as “gentlemen” agreements. If you think that they work with their distributors a month before production then their entire business model is trash. They work with companies like nvidia constantly for building the graphics cards they need. They work with companies that build motherboards years in advance. This is what proper business planning does.

They are not buying components on a whim like a consumer. So again, considering the ram isn’t a singular module and is integrated into the motherboard I highly doubt they wouldn’t have a final schematic that they are supposed to be building around.

If they are delaying production another 3 years then it’s obvious again this is an after though project and is just trying to be responsive to their bad execution they had the last 14 years.

It also isn’t far fetched to use their failure to produce first party titles the last 7 years including the highly anticipated games I mentioned all being cancelled. That they would continue to you know… lie

Yeah with FSR 5 they should be able to offer a much cheaper version of Helix.

Series S is what has killed Xbox Series so... Will they dare?

The factors are largely external. Covid and Russia-Ukraine war causing inflation led to the first price increase in 2022.

Then we get Trump's tariffs increasing hardware prices, AI boom causing a RAM crisis, war on Iran causing a worldwide fuel crisis which impacts the cost of everything.

Gaming doesn't exist in a vacuum. The last few years have been a shitshow and lot of it was definitely avoidable.

LucasRuinedChildhood,

For sure. No disagreement on the external factors doing a lot of this. Where I have to gently push back however is on two fronts:

1. The pandemic definitely caused some issues: asynchronous development was a big issue and really complicated timelines and affected game quality. At the same time, when it comes to price hikes, it's really difficult to know what was genuine necessity and what was taking consumers for a ride. The pandemic brought about "stag-flation" which was increasing prices and stagnant wages, which was a problem caused by supply chain constraints. There was also "Greed-flation", where companies that were slightly affected or had no issues took advantage of the situation and squeezed everyone citing supply chain issues when there were none.

2. It's definitely true that the tariffs, AI boom, and RAM crisis were all things enabled by tech broligarchs throwing money at this caricature of a world leader, one of them being Satya Nadella. I don't think Sony and Nintendo have contributed much to this problem if at all, but Microsoft's Nadella I feel was instrumental in causing every one of those issues. Microsoft as a company contributed to both candidates (though they gave Harris 4x as much if I recall), but Nadella was all in on letting AI run wild. He paid for unregulated AI, and got a war that's not a war (even though Trump called it that at least five times on television) that screwed up helium access. So for me, I feel that one of the players in the gaming industry is a key architect of these issues, and for that reason I struggle a bit to think of it as "external".