Shadow1980 said:
I mean, yeah, kinda-sorta.
There is still direct competition between PlayStation & Xbox. Both MS and Sony spend considerable effort trying to acquire exclusive marketing deals and sometimes even timed-exclusive software. MS is still sinking a lot of money into building the Xbox brand after losing significant market share last generation, as the buyouts of Zenimax and ABK show. How long the competition continues between them remains to be seen. If any of the Big Three ends up going third-party first, it's going to be Xbox, but for the time being it seems like they're in this for at least the next decade, even if they consistently trail PlayStation in terms of sales.
Of course, things are far less overtly confrontational than they were in the 90s, when console makers (esp. Sega) would routinely engage in what amounted to attack ads, finding ways to denigrate the competition. The "16-bit Wars" really felt like an actual conflict between competing companies. Nowadays it's just certain gamers themselves denigrating other platforms out of brand loyalty, while the actual people who run these companies' gaming divisions are publicly rather magnanimous towards their respective competition.
And these days, Nintendo only serves as nominal competition to the others. For the past 18 years they've been doing their own thing, offering different experiences than what you get from a conventional home console. |
I'd say the 7th gen had some pretty healthy banter especially between PS and Xbox. The Kevin Butler ads did everything except name the competition which I know SEGA went ahead and did but still it was pretty obvious who they were referring to. Seemed like once E3 2013 shifted the industry it died down after that. Sony just absolutely turned their fortunes with one massive day and Xbox seemed cowed from then on. After they were dominating they stopped attacking as much.
