Why the 9th Generation is Struggling

PlayStation PlayStation 2 Xbox PlayStation 3 Xbox 360 and you know what even PlayStation 4 no when I say those names it probably brings back some great memories to you doesn't it coming home after school and popping in amazing games like Halo God of War Gears of War Uncharted Shadow of the Colossus literally anything to take your mind off the fact that you have a math test tomorrow for Miss Roman's class and you don't know what the hell you're doing and it was also the most accessible way to game for us kids good luck convincing your

parents to drop three grand on a PC setup you could just play with yourself or just play with your boys and for God's sake it sparked the console Wars people picking and defending their favorite platforms to the death like some epic Space Marine Last Stand and for good reason there was a genuine case that each console could make that they were the best and you should be playing on them instead of those other guys the names PlayStation and Xbox demanded respect and the options and opportunities seemed endless fast forward to today not so much there's

more enthusiasm among New York Jet fans than there is right now for the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox series X for those of you who don't watch football that is really impressive sales for both consoles are declining and public perception of both brands are probably at the lowest they've been in a while and I want to examine what has gone wrong with the ninth generation and why has it been such a disappointment to everybody so it's time to assess the damages so strap in boys and girls and let's get down to business so first with

every generation you expect a leaping quality because the consoles are inherently more powerful but in this case it's not when you look at Graphics between both Generations it doesn't really leap out at you nobody's been able to take advantage of the hardware because of other creative decisions that the Studios have to make the only games off the top of my head that I can only see working on nextg consoles are Spider-Man 2 Ratchet and Clank Rift apart hellblade 2 and maybe rnal that's it I'm not one that harps on Graphics but when you're marketing your

consoles as the most powerful yet and most games feel like they can be played on last gen there's your first strike but then we get into what actually matters what is the biggest thing that consoles rely on games games games games each console has its own set of games that you can only find there console exclusives they are the main selling point for these consoles and what could give them an advantage over others why would I want to buy an Xbox I'm happy with my PS2 well my boy let me tell you about Halo why

would I want to spend 500 big ones to get a PS3 well you want to turn Poseidon into a fuing meatball after the gigantic debacle with the Wii U and Nintendo feeling like they're at the end of their run the switch comes out and guess what's marketed right alongside it breath of the wild which turns out is a masterpiece oh wait and there's a new Mario game coming out later this year too and all the early reviews are saying it's the best ever well bake me a cake you blonde bombshell cuz I'm going to buy

me a switch now personally I have amazing parents so when I asked for a console for my birthday or Christmas they would get it for me so I had every system and every game to play growing up but if you're an average person with only a certain amount of disposable income you're only going to buy one console and whichever one you buy is determined by what games each one has not the technical specs or what entertainment features come with it TV TV TV and movies TV TV TV TV TV TV TV TV TV oh my

God who the hell cares basically the games are what sell the console so where the is everyone it's been no secret that this generation has been sorely lacking in new and exciting games it's become a meme at this point that the PS5 is just the remaster machine and XBox doesn't make new games they buy them it's been laughable just how little output there has been in the now 4 years that these consoles have been out let's start with PlayStation because they're the ones that have gotten the most of these complaints since the launch of the

PS5 there have been 21 PlayStation exclusive games but of those 21 eight have been remasters and remix eight have been sequels and only five have been new games sorry I completely forgot about that very necessary Horizon zero Dawn remaster and that Lego Horizon game which is just a retelling of horizon zero Dawn just in Lego form so that's technically just another remake who asked for this it took until this year 2024 to get three of these new games into that lineup astrobot Stellar blade and Rise of the Ronin both of those last two I have

reviews on so go check them out but even then those last two aren't IPS that Sony created they were licensed which means the only new IPS that have come out for the PS5 are returnal destruction Allstars and astrobot all three of those in some way arrived with the PS5 launch even though it took until now to get a full astrobot game and by the way destruction Allstars performed so bad that they got bought by another Studio before PlayStation could shut them down so right now you got two new I you see my point here compare

this to the PS4 generation where you had the release of new IPS like Spider-Man Horizon ghost of sushima days gone death stranding until dawn God of War got rebranded into a completely different game that's not even mentioning licensed games like the big daddy himself bloodborne and it's stayed there ever since so all of that compared to only two that have been launched for for the PS5 that are still alive and kicking that is pathetic that's not even bringing up the exclusivity deal that they had with Square Enix to get all new Final Fantasy games on

PlayStation but that was ended earlier this year because Square Enix wasn't making enough money on it Final Fantasy is not making enough money on your platform that says everything there's also the problem that a good amount of these new releases are being launched on L Gen 2 and obviously this was a decision made earlier in the generation because we were in the pandemic money was tight and nobody could find a PS5 thank you scalpers but only recently have they actually made a push to make everything PS5 exclusive as of this moment the new PS5 exclusive

games available are Eternal astrobot Spider-Man 2 Ratchet and Clank re depart rise of the Ronin destruction Allstars hell divers 2 and Stellar blade four of those games released in just this year alone what do you need to do to play the critical darling the flagship title of PlayStation God of War what do you need to do to play if you own a PS4 nothing bow down to your new Messiah Horizon who has come to cleanse you of your sins also so you could just forget about it in 5 minutes oh but but you don't need

to buy our shiny new console to play it Sony has not done nearly enough to sell players on this new console and we're 4 years in it's reportedly at the latter half of its life cycle that's a problem but if you want to talk problems let's talk Xbox with PlayStation the game's problem has at least come up recently in this generation Xbox has had this problem dating back to the Xbox one they have not made a highquality blockbuster game in I don't even know how long it's been PlayStation at least when they release their games

they're great and critically acclaimed Darlings that win Awards since the creation of the game awards in 2014 do you know how many Xbox exclusives have been nominated for game of the year zero PlayStation 12 with two wins Xbox has not even been nominated how pathetic is that I'm not saying they haven't released any good games there are other franchises under their belt like sea of Thieves State of Decay flight simulator actually I I can't think of anymore I'm sorry no matter how much you like these games these are not franchises that get people out of

their seats and gets them excited to go buy an Xbox these are the caliber of game that hold you over while the big block Blockbuster games are being worked on they are Game Pass games and nothing more but that's the other problem the big Blockbuster IPS if I'm making a collage of Xbox characters and the only ones I could come up with are the master chief Marcus Phoenix and a godamn race car you know something is horribly wrong here it's different when a company is just struggling to make new successful IP but in Xbox's case

it feels like they just gave up there hasn't even been an attempt to create a new IP with Xbox because they rather make games that supplement Game Pass since they felt that was their only means of competing but the problem is none of them have been good enough to break through to the mainstream and you'd be hard pressed to find a Casual Gamer that can name an Xbox franchise besides the three I mentioned earlier but how about those three franchises they must be good right well Halo has been an absolute bungled mess Gears of War

has been non-existent and the last two entries themselves have had mixed reception Forza is great if you're a racing game fan doesn't anything for me though which brings us to the series X since launching in 2020 besides Forza which is a niche game do you know how many major releases have come out on the Xbox series X Halo infinite high-fi Rush redfall Starfield hellblade 2 and stalker 2 six games what the hell have you been doing the whole time stop talking about doing your job and go do your job Halo infinite's campaign was good but

its multiplayer live service was mismanaged every step of the way and it completely destroyed players faith in 343 as the Shepherds of Halo redfall was a disaster that resulted in the closure of Arcane Austin Starfield was about as Bland of an RPG as you could possibly make and hellblade 2 was a piece of that I don't feel like talking about again it will suck you and I haven't played stalker 2 yet so I'm withholding judgment on that which leaves high-fi Rush which I'll get to later if you can't make anything new and you can't take

advantage of your existing IPS then why the hell should I pay any attention to you not to mention that Xbox is committed to crossplatform launches at least PlayStation makes you wait a while before they put it on PC Xbox is on immediately because of Game Pass and all their new games are also now coming to Playstation there's even been talk about the major IPS coming over yes including Halo can you imagine master chief on PlayStation if they set that Android free it will be the end of all of us so why should I own an

Xbox again every way you look at it Xbox has completely failed in every aspect when it comes to the series X at least there's a reason to own a PS5 but it's not just the games that created this problem it's that now when people look at these companies they no longer see the beacons of light that they once were when discussing the ninth generation it's not just about the games and the hardware it's about the brand image of both sides during the generation and how they manage it and the way PlayStation and Xbox have managed

this generation has been an unmitigated disaster it's been full of decisions you look at and wonder how nobody in the room stood up and said hey uh this is a bad idea starting with PlayStation everything in the PS4 generation was going great they were dominating alltime great games were being turned out left and right nobody could stop them and then a little strange man walked through the door and took over his CEO a man by the name of Jim Ryan he took one look at the live service craze that had been taken over the industry

and he said I want one I want a Golden Goose uh sir are Studios make single player games they don't know how to I stutter gets everyone making a live service game not dog in some the I don't care if they don't know how to do it get them going now and you know what our Studios don't know how to make live service we'll find Studios who do know firewalk haven oh my God it's is that bunge I see on the horizon I I love Destiny hey Bungie come join our family how does $3 billion

sound Herman give them the bag yeah that's another thing Money Was No Object for Jim Ryan during his tenure and even a little bit before that PlayStation had spent at this point billions and billions of dollars between game development and Studio acquisition when people talk about how the AAA game development costs are unsustainable a lot of it can point back to PlayStation and just how much money they've been spending mind you for Less output just listen to some of these game costs God of War Ragnarok 200 million Horizon forbidden west 22 million The Last of

Us Part two 220 million Spider-Man 2 30 00 million what the hell's going on out here just just think about that number $300 million for a sequel to a game that was made for 100 million and in my opinion is better in every category except Graphics let me put this into context ghost of tsushima was made for only $60 million a game arguably better than all of those all of this going on while PlayStation is sinking millions and millions of dollars into live service projects their other studios are making in the meantime yeah you know

why there's been barely any games for the PS5 it's because of this they had 12 live service projects in development and half of them as of right now have already been canned including the Last of Us multiplayer game which naughty dog had no business making just imagine if they took that money and instead made another Jack and Dexter and the rest of the live service games are up in the air they're not even confirmed that's a KD of5 at best but then they got one that broke through hell divers 2 this year took over gaming

it was everywhere democracy was alive and well and it felt like such a breath of fresh air compared to all the Cinematic narrative experiences PlayStation usually offers and what happened Sony decided to get involved and slap the PSN requirement on the game so nobody on PC could play it unless they had it and certain countries that didn't support PSN were just completely cut off from it including Ukraine Lithuania all of Africa Jesus Christ why cuz them that's why now they ended up reversing that decision because the backlash was so bad but the damage was already

done the game started to fall off dramatically and all momentum was just snapped out of existence and by the way even though the decision was reversed the game was just pulled in any countries that couldn't support PSN so as far as that goes nothing's changed you still can't play it if you live in Ukraine and now every PlayStation game that comes to PC will be forced to have this required because they want your data and they want it now it's my money and I need it now but that's not even the worst thing that PlayStation

has done recently I have a confession to make dear viewer I lied earlier you see I said PlayStation created only three new IPS during the PS5 but in actuality they made four one that has been redacted by the Imperium Inquisition but I have received permission to unmask It For Better or For Worse if there is one thing that PlayStation and Sony will be defined by in the ninth generation it will be the absolute disaster that was Concord a here we go again the biggest embarrassment in the history of gaming and I don't think it's close

a live service game that Sony had tagged internally as the future of PlayStation Herman Holst himself had called it his baby this game's development suffered heavily from toxic positivity nobody in house could criticize it despite the fact that every single person on YouTube who saw this thing was violently screaming from the rooftops hey nobody wants this but it doesn't matter because they saw it as their Marvel they were going to make merch animes they had a section of that new secret level show coming out on Amazon all this content was going to be made for

this game and then it came out and nobody gave a Concord was nothing more than a generic hero shooter and an already saturated Market with some of the worst design heroes in any game I've ever seen and worse than that it was $40 where most others in this genre are free so even if you were thinking about playing it just to see what the fuss was about that stopped you real quick the game flopped to such a degree that it was shut down 2 weeks later the studio was shut down in late October and everyone

who bought the game got a full refund so they literally made no money with this game but wait there's more somehow do you know how much money PlayStation spent on this game take a guess 50 million 100 million 200 million 250 no no wait 300 no no no according to con moriarti of Last Stand media Concord cost 400 million you've got to be kidding me that's reportedly not even counting how much it cost cost to acquire firewalk Studios these guys paid 200 million before the game was even in Alpha State and development was going so

bad that they felt the genius need to spend another $200 million on it to get it to quote minimum viable product status $400 million for 697 Peak players on Steam you guys are fuing idiots there was no better indicator to players that PlayStation was severely out of touch because everyone who saw Concord thought the exact same thing except PlayStation and they still have fair games and Marathon two other live service games coming out and uh I'm sure that's going to go well too much money and too much poers held by just a few people all

this money spent for nothing and it's no coincidence that Jim Ryan retires right before this comes out and right before Sony CFO heroki Toki comes in does a financial analysis of PlayStation and immediately wants to jump out a window so it's no surprise that the PS5 Pro is 700 bucks and you have to buy both the disc drive and The Stance separately this is the Concord tax and you are going to pay for it as of this moment because there's still time the ninth generation for PlayStation will be defined by self- sabotage and being disconnected

from their fan base to an extreme extent but if you think that's bad Xbox would like a word allow me to reintroduce myself the good thing for Xbox is that they were already at a pretty low point after getting bodied in the Xbox One era so it's not like PlayStation where they were riding high and then stumbled really bad there wasn't really a lot of room to fall I'm just kidding they got way worse what makes Xbox's situations so much worse is that they lost something even more important than good games they lost faith faith

in the Xbox brand is at the lowest it has ever been with play at least when they put out a single player game you know it's going to be good with Xbox you can't even count on that anymore I mentioned earlier how they can't seem to make a good high-quality game or even oversee highquality games and after a while it doesn't matter how many amazing game showcases they have when it comes time to produce results they haven't been able to do it couple that with nothing short of just incompetence across the board nobody in Xbox

leadership knows what the hell they're doing and they're also headed up by The Biggest Loser I've ever seen Phil Spencer I call him a loser because he literally said in that kind of funny interview that it doesn't matter if XBox makes good games they can't compete with the other platforms oh I smell a in here I've said it before and I'll say it again Xbox is run by idiots they can't identify Talent they mismanage their teams why in God's name as a racing developer working on an RPG they apparently have no idea what's happening inside

their Studios also whoever the head of marketing is at Xbox should consider becoming a politician because at least stealing money is in the job description just the name alone Xbox series X is bad but this after you already had the Xbox One X and the Xbox One S and both X and S already sound kind of the same nobody thought this would be confusing to the average person this is branding 101 guys and also when I'm on your website why is it that I had to dig to find exclusive Xbox series X franchises yeah I

have to know PlayStation has this on their website why don't you have it here to at least give people a reason to buy a series X and you know it's always a great day when games like anota contact you to try to get certification to launch on Xbox but they can't because nobody at Xbox responded to their email why is everyone so stupid and can you guys tell me when you decided to stop promoting your games you know stalker 2 came out a few days ago right I completely forgot it was coming out this week

cuz I never saw any promotion for it this is one of these six XBox exclusive games you've released and I never saw one advertisement for it and don't you have Indiana Jones releasing in like 2 weeks where are all the ads tv YouTube this is a respectable IP you'd think they'd be hammering it before the holidays what are you guys sleeping over there but when it comes to identifying Talent you know they bought Bethesda right but somehow disregarded the fact that every everything Bethesda has done since Fallout 4 has been a disaster a company that

refuses to accept criticism and keeps stumbling over itself how do you guys break a Fallout 4 remaster it came out 9 years ago I know that redfall and Starfield were in development long before Xbox acquired Bethesda but you attach yourself to this brand this brand that makes mistake after mistake every point you have to live with these mistakes and so far these mistakes are not outweighing the benefits cuz you have not gotten any wins so far talk about losing faith in a company how could you play Starfield shattered space and have any hope that Elder

Scroll 6 is going to be good especially at this point when all exclusive games on Xbox seemingly can't get past 30 FPS because we have to make games that also work on Series S and if you want a highquality game on it it might explode it really undercuts the whole world's most powerful console Mantra it's why famously laran had to work out a deal with Xbox to launch balers Gate 3 on series X with split screen but no split screen on Series S because it couldn't handle it a reminder it's 2024 and nobody thought of

that when they made the decision to make the series s everywhere you look it's a show but then you get a bright light a bright light called high-fi rush high-fi rush was the best Xbox game in years on the platform it was a shot in the arm that bran desperately needed from a studio in a country that they had been trying to break into everything was set up perfectly it wasn't nominated for Game of the Year year mainly because 2023 was so stacked but it didn't win others and if there was any XBox exclusive that

could have been nominated for Game of the Year this was the game but this is the console Wars Sony is not going to outdo Us in any way no no no no no no no wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait everything that I have said about Xbox every feeling that everybody has towards the brand right now culminated with this moment the decision to shut down Tango Gameworks after the releasee of Hi-Fi Rush was the moment that the Xbox brand as we knew it died I made a whole video on it back when

it first happens it was a plain admission that Xbox could not care less about Gamers and more importantly game developers their good guy persona they spent years building was shattered in an instant it told everyone they only care about money and now everything that comes out of Phil Spencer's mouth is meaningless it's also a decision that just tanks every other Studio's morale because when you flat out say that even if you make a great game it still may not be enough that doesn't exactly fill your workers with confidence Xbox as an employer has become the

Inquisition innocence proves nothing also with this decision itself with Hi-Fi Rush every Executive also looks like an idiot because HiFi Russ was Shadow dropped Day One on Game Pass with no marketing or promotion before that and it's still ended up being a hit on Game Pass oh but then you find out that game pass negatively impacts sales for any game G that Launches on the platform so when you take all those into account it doesn't take a genius to figure out what's going to happen Hi-Fi Russia's Financial failure was entirely because of Xbox's mismanagement and

then Matt ass has the balls to turn around at an employee town hall and say we need small games that give us Prestige and Awards this also after announcing the closure of the other set of Bethesda Studios and messing up the names of two of them luckily Crafton ended up acquiring Tango Gameworks so they're still going to be alive and Hi-Fi Rush as an IP will get more investment which is the best news I've heard in a while but this is the moment where the curtains were pulled back and everyone saw Xbox's true side and

just how horribly run they are and their image is forever tarnished and their Goodwill is completely gone along with people's faith in the brand and the sad part nobody is upset about it so a little post edit note here during the making of this video Xbox decided it would be a great idea to release this ad everything is an Xbox according to them according to this apparently so not only have you not given people a reason to buy an Xbox you've given them a reason to not buy an Xbox great great job guys great job

I I I did not think you could get worse but somehow you did so the ninth generation has had its share of problems and it's no surprise that both platforms are struggling right now both sides have done a pretty good job converting people to PC at least until they find out that every port comes out broken if I had to sum up the ninth generation as of this moment it is a time when both companies cannot get out of their own way and it is going to take a lot of investment to write the ship

for these guys there is hope for PlayStation to rebound and I expect them to but Xbox has sold their soul and are now nothing more than a shell of themselves and it's really sad to see it because competition is the best thing for all of us we can't just have PlayStation as the only mainstream console while Nintendo is off doing their own thing nothing good will come of that but I've talked about this enough already I've said all I need to say I hope you guys enjoyed watching I just hit 10K Subs recently so thank

you so much for that I still can't believe it I must be doing something right so thank you for all the support I hope you like the video and I'll see you guys next time peace