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| Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo now compete in different ways, raising questions about whether the traditional console war still matters. |
By Jon Scarr
CNBC’s recent article framing Xbox as “losing the console race by miles” is not wrong on paper. Hardware sales tell a rough story. But the bigger question is whether that race still matters in 2025. And honestly, it feels like we are arguing over a scoreboard most people stopped checking years ago.
Why the Console War Made Sense in the First Place
The traditional console war made sense when buying a box was the only way in. You picked a side, bought the hardware, and stayed there. That mindset still fits Nintendo and Sony, which continue to build tightly controlled ecosystems around dedicated consoles. Their success is still closely tied to unit sales.
But Microsoft is clearly playing a different game.
Why Xbox Stopped Treating Consoles as the Centre
Xbox stopped treating the console as the centre of everything years ago. Instead, the focus shifted to access. Console, PC, handhelds, phones, smart TVs, and cloud gaming. Wherever you already play, Xbox wants to be there. That change makes raw hardware numbers feel incomplete rather than definitive.
This is also why Xbox no longer emphasizes console sales in public reporting. What matters more now is how many people are playing, how often, and on which devices. Services like Xbox Game Pass say far more about Microsoft’s priorities than quarterly console charts ever could.
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| Xbox’s strategy focuses on playing across devices, not just selling a single console. |
The Console War vs the Reality of How People Play Now
This is where the CNBC framing starts to feel dated. Comparing Xbox console sales directly against PlayStation and Switch assumes all three companies want the same outcome. They do not. Sony and Nintendo still need you to buy their box to fully commit. Xbox increasingly does not.
When Halo shows up on PlayStation, that is not waving a white flag. It is Xbox saying the walls matter less than they used to.
That does not mean everything is fine. The layoffs, studio closures, and price increases are real. Trust has taken hits, and Xbox’s messaging has not always been clear. Criticizing the execution is fair. Pretending the strategy does not exist is not.
So Does the Console War Still Matter in 2025?
The bigger shift is this. The real competition in gaming today is not console versus console. It is ecosystem versus ecosystem. Subscriptions versus ownership. Flexibility versus lock-in. Time spent versus boxes sold.
So does the console war matter? It still does if hardware is your core business. It still matters for shelf space and exclusives. But for Xbox, the war everyone keeps scoring might already be over.
The more important question is whether Microsoft can make its “play anywhere” vision feel stable, fairly priced, and worth committing to long term. That outcome will shape Xbox’s future far more than who sells the most consoles this year.
And honestly, that is the race that actually matters.
What console war? It ended a while ago. Sony won, and we are now in the platform wars. Sony® is drastically behind, but not as much as Nintendo. But their fans don't really care until they do, and Nintendo will waste millions trying to catch up. Sony is moving in that direction, but it's going to take some time.
ReplyDeleteI think we’re actually pretty close on the big point. The old console-versus-console fight already ran its course. That’s why I framed it as an ecosystem shift rather than a win-loss scoreboard.
DeleteWhere I hesitate is calling it a clean “Sony won” moment, because it depends on which scoreboard you’re using. Hardware sales say one thing. Reach, time spent, and where games show up say something else entirely.
Nintendo can afford to move at its own pace because its audience follows the software, not the tech curve. Sony’s situation is trickier. They still need the console to anchor everything, so any shift toward platforms has to be careful and slow.
That’s really the point of the article. Everyone is fighting a different war now. We just keep using the old language to describe it.
The problem with Xbox is they had a good and cheap ecosystem that was semi-working. Someone at Microsoft realized that the financials were unsustainable(gamers knew this already). This attention was probably brought on by the activision buyout. Since then Xbox has made move after move that clearly signals they are about the bottom line and not the player. This, imho, has caused a mass exodus from the brand already. The brand Xbox is hurting right now in the eyes of gamers. That isn't a big deal if you are the cheapest company who offers great deals, which is what Xbox was before the console gamepass price increase. Now it is just a reasonably priced rental service. The mindshare they are losing though is also from the smaller things. Stock issues, no xbox wrapup, canceling anticipated games, closing studios, and an audience getting actively teased over this by console warriors. Engagement metrics for Xbox online are not great. Top it off, the console war may be over but the warriors are not. The gaming audience is hostile to Xbox at this point. Their only hope is to appeal to price. They need to make us an offer so cheap and so good and we have no other choice. Otherwise, Xbox is no more and Microsoft Game Studios will be a 3rd party publisher.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I get where this is coming from. For a long time, Xbox felt like the best deal in gaming, and that goodwill mattered a lot. Once prices went up and the messaging got messy, that cushion disappeared fast.
DeleteA lot of the frustration isn’t even about one big move. It’s the small stuff piling up. Games getting cancelled, studios shutting down, features quietly vanishing, and long stretches where Xbox just doesn’t explain itself. That wears people down.
I don’t think being cheap alone saves them though. A low price helps you try something. It doesn’t help you stick around if everything feels uncertain.
The bigger problem is trust. Right now it’s hard to know what committing to Xbox actually looks like a few years out. Until that feels solid again, the ecosystem pitch is always going to feel shaky, no matter the deal.
Competition drives innovation and Competition is good for the consumer are two of the biggest lies about the gaming industry. They are only occasionally true rather than being unquestionable axioms. When Sony was light years ahead with the PS2, they never stopped innovating. Microsoft has been harmful to the industry since their first major move - paying to have Janes 15E only run in hardware acceleration for D3D cutting OpenGL and Glide out. Ant-consumerism from the beginning.
ReplyDeleteI’m with you on the idea that those lines get treated like gospel when they really shouldn’t. Competition can help, but in games it’s been hit or miss for decades. Sometimes it sparks new ideas. Other times it just creates new ways to lock people in.
DeleteThe PS2 era is a good callout. Sony was miles ahead and still took chances. That wasn’t pressure doing the work. It was confidence.
And yeah, Microsoft’s history on PC and consoles isn’t some clean slate. A lot of early moves were about control first, not what was healthiest for the space. You can draw a pretty straight line from that mindset to some of the friction people still feel now.
That’s why I don’t buy simple “war” talk anymore. Power shifts around, but the way it gets used matters way more than who’s technically winning at the moment.