The console market is not enough for Xbox and PlayStation and both aim to also arrive on PC, mobile and cloud. Is it the winning strategy?
“PlayStation will be omnipresent”these are the words used by Kenichiro Yoshida, the CEO of Sony, to summarize the company's strategy in the gaming market, which intends to also expand on PC, mobile and cloudbasically wherever there is a suitable device for playing.
Microsoft has never used the term “ubiquitous”, but Phil Spencer's strategy it has been there for all to see for years. With the console war now lost or difficult to recover from, the company has long since begun to look elsewhere to expand its business. From the Xbox One era onwards, all the games produced by the internal teams are published simultaneously on both consoles and PCs, while Xbox Game Pass, in addition to proving to be a successful service, also represents an important bridge for cloud gaming and bring the Green Cross ecosystem to the mobile devices and smart TVs of hundreds of millions of potential players. Not only that, the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and in particular of King, was an essential piece for the Xbox mobile store, which Microsoft is already working on by Spencer's own admission.
From this point of view, Microsoft would certainly appear to be better organised, at least for the simple fact that it began to “equip itself” with a certain advance compared to Sony. In fact, PlayStation also has a cloud streaming service, but it is still limited and immature, the exclusives also arrive on PC, but with a notable gap compared to the console versions, while on the mobile side the company has created a specific division with the acquisition of Savage Game (now renamed Neon Koi), but the fruits of those investments have yet to be seen. However, the Japanese company can count on a extremely strong brand created on the basis of years of success, a factor that should absolutely not be underestimated.
Who wants too much nothing squeezes?
Net of the differences in terms of progress and strategies of the two companies, for example Yoshida believes that “all you can eat” services similar to Game Pass are not necessarily the future, both Sony and Microsoft would seem to focus on same direction.
A winning strategy on paper: reaching multiple devices and penetrating multiple sectors means drawing on a certainly a larger potential audience pool and consequently generate higher profits. However, all that glitters is not gold and in pursuing these expansion plans both PlayStation and Xbox could encounter major obstacles.
For example, despite the possibilities offered by the cloud, not all experiences created for PC and console are captivating for mobile players. We therefore need a significant diversification of the offer, with the possible risk of failing to maintain a high level of quality among all the projects in the pipeline or give the right attention to all sectors. In this sense, PlayStation has already failed in its first attempt to foray into the mobile market in 2012, while one of the most common criticisms of Spencer's management is that of promoting the Xbox Series X|S and One in a very timid manner.
Not only that, where the console market is made up of three main players, in the mobile market Sony and Microsoft would find themselves competing with multiple realities of a certain depthsuch as Tencent, NetEase, Zynga and Hoyoverse, just to name a few.
But we leave the word to you. Do you think that Sony and Microsoft's expansionist aims will bear the desired results? Let us know in the comments.
This is an editorial written by a member of the editorial team and is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
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