Indies to continuing to be slow to appear on PS? AAA to start disappearing sooner off of Xbox One?

[scrapking]

I predict we'll soon start seeing some AAA releases coming to PS4 but not Xbox One.  I predict this for two reason:

1) It's both easier and cheaper to upgrade to current-gen on Xbox thanks to the Series S.  Despite not being up to PS5 or Series X power, the Series S has the virtue of being cheaper and more efficient than either of those (which is desirable in its own way).  And make no mistake, it's a massive upgrade over last-gen overall.  Super-fast load times, Quick Resume, and titles typically optimized for 60 FPS (and sometimes even 120 FPS) adds up to an experience that truly feels next-gen compared to even a PS4 Pro or an Xbox One X.

2) The Xbox One didn't sell nearly as well as the PS4, therefore (as people upgrade from last-gen to current-gen) Xbox One sales will reach a "not worth it" point sooner than PS4 game sales will.

However, I conversely predict the trend we're already seeing a trend of more indie games coming to (some combination of) PC/Switch/Xbox than the PS will continue.  Unless something is done by Sony to change that, I predict that trend to accelerate.  As much as people occasionally complain about the number of "ads" on the Xbox Dashboard, these days those ads are almost always for games in some way or other.  Unlike some of the Xbox 360 dashboards, the Xbox One and Xbox Series dashboards "ads" are rarely about Doritos or Mountain Dew (and, in the rare cases they are, it's basically always a game-related promotion that somehow combines the advertiser with a game-release or game contest).

Indies have cited the many places that games are highlighted on the current Xbox Dashboard as a positive for them.  Some indie publishers have suddenly, and initially confusingly for them, seen a huge spike in one of their games, only to discover Microsoft was highlighting their game somewhere on the Dashboard without even telling them!  There are a lot of places on the Dash where Microsoft highlights games (the home screen, the main page of the Store, every game-related sub page of the Store, potentially under the social places that list what your friends are playing, and many other places besides, with different games typically highlighted on every one).

Conversely, the PS5 interface that's largely free of game ads means indie publishers get highlighted in very few places, and very infrequently (if ever).  They have complained that the only way to have success on PS is to pay Sony for an extensive co-promotion package.  So there are fewer promotion opportunities for indies on PS, and the ones that Sony offers are apparently very expensive, and the sum total of that seems to be significantly more success for indies on Xbox despite Xbox being a smaller market.  And that's before even mentioning the many opportunities for indies on Xbox via Game Pass.  The occasional PS indie showcase, or sale that includes indies, or occasional indie game that gets featured via a Sony service (PS Plus, PS Now) doesn't seem to be enough to make up for the sheer frequency and breadth of promotion of indies on the Xbox.  When you see news stories like this, it kind of says it all:

"In one of the most extreme cases of that discrepancy, one anonymous publisher says that their game sold about 20,000 copies on Xbox and about 7,000 copies on PlayStation. When they released DLC for that game, it sold about 2,000 units on Xbox compared to only 7 units sold for PlayStation platforms."

That's one anecdote, and an anonymous one at that, but as I watch the news stories I'm seeing more and more examples of indie games coming later, or not at all, to PS.  So it seems like there's fire behind this smoke.

TLDR; I predict we'll sooner start seeing AAA games stop coming out on Xbox One than PS4, but conversely we'll continue to see more indies come out later (or not at all) on PS.  And this post having both a pro-Xbox and a pro-PS slant will probably make all the fanboys unhappy.  :P