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PARIS: The upcoming release of a ninth generation of video game consoles from Sony and Microsoft will become a sales hit for consumers seeking entertainment during pandemic lockdown.
But could it also be their swan song as players’ habits change?
Both companies have been leaking information for months on the PlayStation 5 (PS5) and Xbox Series X to build buzz, and players can start getting their hands on it next week.
In a sign of great anticipation from gamers, pre-orders allotted for consoles at major retailers were quickly sold out, with both companies expecting high demand in the run-up to the end of the year.
Sony has said that it expects to sell 7.6 million PS5 consoles until the end of next March, beating the sales performance of the PS4.
And it will be a major upgrade in terms of hardware – the current generation of consoles launched in 2013.
Both new consoles will offer much more powerful core processors and graphics, support 4K TVs, and offer ray tracing, allowing for a better representation of how light behaves.
“When you look at the technical specifications of the new consoles, they are 10 times above the current generation,” said Charles-Louis Planade, a video game expert at Midcap Partners.
“We are going to have games that are more beautiful, more realistic, more immersive. People will be impressed.”
DARK CLOUD IN THE SKY?
Sony sold 110 million PS4 consoles in the past seven years, more than double that of its competitor Xbox One.
“For Microsoft, the challenge is not to let Sony get too far ahead, maybe even the game with them,” Planade told AFP.
Considering the growing number of players, the analyst believes that they could even match their previous success.
Others are not so sure, given the changes in the industry, which is already beginning to move away from big and expensive machines to cloud gaming.
“This generation could be the last physical console. It will be the last time we hear about teraflops,” said Audrey Leprince, co-founder of Game Bakers, an independent game studio.
A teraflop refers to the ability of a processor to calculate a trillion operations, and both Sony and Microsoft have been bragging about the speed and power of their new consoles.
READ: Nintendo raises annual Switch sales forecast to 24 million units as pandemic boosts home gaming
Leprince said there have been no big innovations with the game’s interfaces or with the games themselves.
But “the stone in the puddle” is a change to the “subscription model,” which means that console makers are turning into a “Netflix of video games,” he said.
The subscriptions – Game Pass for Microsoft and PlayStation Plus for Sony “are going to completely revolutionize the industry, as was the case with movies and music,” Leprince said.
“The challenge for console makers is to hold on to their subscribers so as not to accommodate rivals” like Google or Amazon, Planade said.
A TRANSITION PHASE
The two web giants are betting on cloud gaming, allowing them to do without consoles.
The games can run on a variety of devices, such as smartphones and tablets.
Because cloud servers do the heavy lifting in terms of processing, there is no need for powerful and expensive consoles.
But both companies have also taken a step towards cloud gaming by offering lower-priced versions of their new unitless consoles.
Games must be downloaded from the web or streamed, and they have dedicated xCloud and PlayStation Now services.
“We are in a transition phase,” said Laurent Michaud, an analyst specializing in the video game industry, who hopes that consoles and cloud games will coexist for a time.
“Trends indicate that this will not be the last generation of consoles,” he believes.
Many gamers value playing on large, high-resolution screens, and publishers will want to take advantage of 8K televisions that offer a much better experience.
“Networks, even in a few years, will not be fast enough to transport” images for 8K displays, Michaud noted.
With “technology putting all manufacturers on the same level”, the game catalog “will be even more important than in the past for the success of this generation.”
Both Sony and Microsoft have lined up a series of highly anticipated games to launch with consoles.
