Any sports fan will tell you of the highs and lows of following their team through thick and thin. Last minute winners, heartbreaking losses, and skillful legends are carved into their memories. Right now, my team is pretty good, and for a long time it was very, very bad. Before that, we were tragically good, winning nothing despite our greatness. I understand the high of winning, and the gut-punch of just missing out. I know what it's like to think you just need one more player, one lucky break, one big bounce, and it's all sorted. You can't leave your team, so all you can do is hope the chips fall. But your games console is not a sports team. Stop treating it like one.
For years now, people with too few friends and limited access to soap have been engaged in the Console War, which really amounts to picking either Xbox or PlayStation and pretending everything about it is great while everything about the other one sucks. In the last gen, this war was a cakewalk for Sony, whose 'For the Players' messaging was backed up by stellar exclusives that pushed the envelope of the medium, while Xbox failed to use the success of the 360 as a launchpad, instead struggling to pitch the Xbox One as an all-in-one entertainment system when Kinect, its core gimmick, failed horribly - then there was the not so minor fact that Xbox had no games.
So far in this gen, the dust is yet to settle on the battle. PlayStation is continuing in mostly the same vein - through God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, and the upcoming duo of Final Fantasy 16 and Spider-Man 2, PlayStation 5 still has the big exclusives. Xbox is no longer playing copycat though. It has changed its approach, pushing the flexibility and access of Game Pass, while buying up studios that will deepen its roster. The long development cycles (and protracted acquisition of Activision) mean the only fruit borne from this approach so far is the rotting apple of Redfall. With Starfield, Perfect Dark, and the aforementioned might of Activision Blizzard on the way, the tide could turn.
Those on Team Xbox have celebrated these acquisitions as evidence that things are turning around for the green machine, while Sony will be left in the dirt. It doesn't matter to them that acquisitions typically lead to less creativity as smaller studios are merged into large money makers, or that monopolisation tends to introduce anti-consumer practices while limiting job opportunities to devs. All it means is their team is winning. They're blind to the fact that they're actually losing. We all are.
Now comes the cry that I'm only saying this because it's Xbox, because the press are paid off by Sony or because I'm clearly an enemy in the Console War, an interloping spy here to cause carnage. But it's bad when Sony does this too. Sony has been doing this for longer, and while it has admittedly been on a smaller scale than Activision Blizzard, it's not slowing down - Bungie was recently slurped up by Sony. In Sony, we also see what happens under a monopoly. The company is dominating, so it doesn't need to be For The Players anymore. Instead it charges $70 per game, takes at least a year to add its games to its subscription service (which is far worse than Game Pass), and tells us all it was our idea to not have PS games on PC until three years after launch.
But they're winning. So fans love them. And fans want more winning, so they're prepared for things to get worse. Sony has been making rumblings of more acquisitions, and fans are once more begging for the stranglehold on gaming to tighten, for there to be fewer games around, for less risks to be taken, and for devs to all be part of one happy family (wherein losing a job at one studio likely means another 50 now have their doors permanently closed to you). It’s like hoping your sports team signs a star player, but instead of getting a wunderkid you get fewer opportunities for unique ideas to thrive in a medium you supposedly love. Imagine if Real Madrid decided not to buy Jude Bellingham, but instead to buy Espanyol, Celta Vigo, and Real Sociedad and say all the points those teams won are now points for Real Madrid. If you’re American, swap out those teams for the Texas Tummyticklers and the Michigan Mudsquelchers.
Fans have been touting the juicy peaches of Ubisoft, Capcom, Square Enix, and Atlus being ripe for the picking, but I'm not sure why they would cheer for one big company buying another big company to become a very big company. The little guy never wins in those situations, and regardless of how many PS t-shirts you own and how long you spend online each day insulting Xbots, you are still the little guy. You always will be. You do not have to be on PlayStation's team.
Most people can't afford both consoles, so it's natural to want the one you own to be the best. To that extent, it's normal to be a 'fan' of either Xbox or PlayStation. But when you move from hoping the latest exclusive is good, or even the schadenfreudic desire that the competitor's games suck, and start rooting for million dollar acquisitions that often damage the fabric of the medium so that your team can win, you've gone too far. You don't need to be a PlayStation Fan. You can just be a Person With A PlayStation.