Why I think PC gamers are defending Xbox over PlayStation:

I am as I have repeatedly said, a PC gamer. I have an Xbox but that is due to having a family I don’t remember the last time I played on it. I have seen an increase in people that are PC gamers online, defending Xbox when there is no incentive for them as the whole console war is generally associated with head shakes from them. As PC gamers people discuss video cards, CPUs, games and which storefront is a pain, and which is tolerable. They discuss the unnecessary role of multiple launchers and resources usage by programs as well as everyone’s favourite subject, FPS. We are by no means better than console gamers by any far stretch but when it comes to PS5 vs Series X, or Game Pass vs PS Plus we couldn’t really care. The one argument we do get involved with, generally, is the exclusivity argument.

Because PC gaming is by and large an open platform, PC gamers are not keen on exclusives. I remember when this really hit me was Satisfactory. This was a game I had had on my wishlist on Steam for ages. I loved Factorio and when I saw a game that was that but 3D first person I was really intrigued. I followed the dev diaries, watched the YouTube videos, followed updates and waited for the release date. Eventually they set a date and I was keen to give the game a go. The day of the release arrived, and I went to Steam ready to buy it only to find it missing from not only my wishlist, but from the store completely. There was a new video on their YouTube channel, and they described how they had decided to go exclusive to Epic Game Store. The video was condescending and ran along the lines of if you don’t like it, don’t buy it. There was no accountability regarding the fact that they had used Steam’s massive reach to garner a following and any form of visibility. Steam had had this game on their up-and-coming carousel for ages and had marketed the game for them. Now whether you like Steam or not or see it as a monopoly (it isn’t it has market dominance through being the better option) this is just bad form. If they wanted to take Tim Sweeny’s money, then all well and good but to do it on the day that your game is set to release is scummy.

Epic have made the process of exclusivity more acceptable in PC gaming which I felt is not in keeping with how things work on the PC. Steam is where it is because of what it offers. The Epic Game Store launched with bare bones functionality, not even having a basket. With all the money they make from Fortnite you would think Tim Sweeny would have sent his devs away and told them to make a Steam clone as the absolute basic start and then add to that in order to make his store a better proposition for customers so that they would choose his store over Steam. This is what I, and I believe other PC users, would want. More competition and someone to come in and pressure Steam to do better. This has happened to a degree but I believe this is in spite of Epic rather than because of them and the outcome is Steam is still top dog and has little reason to do better.

All this of this rant is to say that PC gamers have been looked after by Xbox as opposed to PlayStation. Xbox have put their games on our platform mostly where we prefer to play them and day and date. The Xbox app is there (and with a recent update has added Steam integration where you can play Steam games without opening the Steam launcher) but you are not forced to use it. People complain about the Windows store, but I haven’t really had a problem with it although I haven’t bought much through it. The Game Pass app works fine but again this is a personal experience and others have found it has its issues.

PlayStation has not really done anything to endear themselves to PC gamers. They have reluctantly put their games on PC and have paid money to companies that they have relationships with due to exclusivity on consoles, to ensure 3rd party games don’t come to PC. They release the games they have put on PC much later and are surprised when they sell but are disappointed when they don’t sell as well as they could. Zeitgeist, FOMO and release excitement is a thing and hurts PlayStation and the 3rd party companies when they release their games later than on PlayStation. This is becoming more apparent as 3rd party developers are speaking about day and date releases on PC and PlayStation themselves are reducing their time differences between their releases on PlayStation and PC. The new Final Fantasy 7 Remakes are a good example of this with Final Fantasy Remake releasing on PlayStation in April 2020 (Intergrade releasing  June 2021), then Final Fantasy Intergrade on Epic a year later (December 2021) then finally on Steam 18 months later on June 2022. Rebirth released in February 2024 on PS5 and less than a year later on Steam and Epic simultaneously in January 2025 (including a pack of both games as a bundle at a reduced 50% off in some places). The games are due to be released on both Xbox and Switch 2 by January 2026 with Rebirth coming out later in 2026. With the final game due soonish and the hint that this will be a multiplatform release (I believe this will at bare minimum be PS5 and PC simultaneously) I cannot see why they wouldn’t release them all together.

As a side note I have not bought or played these games at all as they were still £70 each even though they were almost 3yrs old when the first game came to Steam. Bearing in mind that Final Fantasy 7 is my Final Fantasy.  The dual pack was £90 when it initially came out but by that time it had been 5yrs since the first games released of which I had seen a playthrough of so had no connection to the game nor any feeling of hype. I also feel that both Xbox and Square have missed a trick as I would have put the first game on Game Pass (paid for by Xbox) and have the second for sale at full price. Have a bundle of both games with a reduced price to entice a group of players to buy and play their game. Square are essentially coming cap in hand to both PC and Xbox gamers as they obviously did not sell enough on the PS5 otherwise they would have remined exclusive and this is born out in the fact that they are speaking about multiplatform release and date and date on PC and hopefully Xbox and Switch2 (they are being cagy about this bit of information neither confirming nor denying).

The sales of Sony games on PC have also reduced as time went on. Horizon was the first game releases and sold 2.5Mil copies followed by Days Gone (1.1Mil) and God of War (2.8Mil) and Spiderman Remastered (2.2Mil) and since then the sales have dwindled between 1-1.5Mil until Helldivers 2 which sold an impressive 12Mil (the most on any platform with PlayStation coming in at around 5Mil). Now correlation does not mean causation and from a small data set of one you cannot draw any conclusions especially as Helldivers 2 is a breakout hit on all platforms as well as it being a multiplayer game and the fact that the game sold 600 000 on Xbox in a few days outstripping the PS5 sales over the same period. It will be interesting when all the other developers put their games on all platforms day and date and how this will affect sales and if this will prompt PlayStation to do the same thing.

From what I have seen from the PC commentators on YouTube and other places, there is no love lost between them and PlayStation, and I tend to agree. It is not that their games are disliked but rather that with PlayStation PC gamers are second class citizens. They cater to their player base and then come for a second helping from the PC gaming community with one executive stating that putting games on PC was like ‘printing money’. They are also perceived as very consumer un-friendly. Their decisions are not dedicated to what they can offer us as gamers but rather the expectation that we will buy it because it is a Sony product. This is based on years of having a captive audience who have bought what they put out (often multiple copies of the same game remastered, remade or reimagined).

In the last 2 years Sony have released the following first party games : Marvel Spiderman 2, Concord and Atro Bot as well as remakes of The Last of Us Part 2, Until Dawn. They published Stellar Blade and had Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy Rebirth (console exclusive), Silent Hill 2 remake, Rise of the Ronin (Console exclusive) and Death Stranding on the Beach as well as play tests for both Fairgames (which may be cancelled) and Marathon (which did not go well). It has been estimated that Sony has made $830mil from PC game sales alone since 2020 and it accounts for a third of all Sony’s first party game revenue. That’s 5 years and an average of $166Mil a year with Helldivers accounting for much of this revenue. This information flies in the face of many detractors claiming that PlayStation should not put games on PC as PC players do not buy games and pirate them instead.

The release of Helldivers should be a wake up call to PlayStation and their fan base. There was a cry from PlayStation gamers that they should not put their games on PC, and heaven forbid on Xbox, but the Helldivers communities response to PC players and Xbox players has been really good, welcoming them all in to die for the sake of democracy and liberty. This is how the gaming community should be. We are fractured enough in society, with countries pitted against one another, social divides and this should be a way for us to connect. We should all learn from the Helldivers community how to just play the game irrelevant of our platform of choice.

PlayStation has the option to sell their games everywhere. Xbox has admitted they lost the console war and instead are focusing on making money through games. There is talk about them leaving the console business but I cannot see why they would woth 30Mil consoles sold and many more that never made the jump to the Seris X\S consoles. They do need to focus on keeping those players and adding value propositions to their offerings. I believe the ROG Xbox Ally devices are an indication of this. Sony have been top dog for many years and this I and many others believe has made them complacent. They have moved from enticing new players and offering value to their current players to just finding ways to make the most money off of them. Multiple remakes and remasters, more sequels, no real new IPs (the last true new IP was Returnal in 2021), a huge focus on multiplayer games (no I think necessarily a bad thing but it was a singular focus) and the almost singular focus on increasing profits has made Sony fall back from their dominant position. Xbox are not playing the game that Sony are good at anymore. They know they cannot compete on the playing field PlayStation has created so they changed tack and are focussing on different things that they are good at including PC. They are also looking for growth. If you look at Xbox vs PlayStation revenue over the last 10yrs In 2015 PlayStation made $1.6Bil in profiut compared to Xbox’s $0.3Bil. 10yrs later and PlayStation made $2.6Bil compared to Xbox’s $1.9Bil. The predictions of the two are similar to where they are now and although PlayStation remains more profitable you cannot ignore that PlayStation’s profits increased 56% in the last 10yrs whereas Xbox’s increased 567% in the same period. There is a prediction that Xbox has hit the limit of Game Pass and the boost they received from the ABK purchase but it seems to me that Xbox has had a track record of adaptability that PlayStation does not.

Overall I don’t think that PC gamers like Xbox or Microsoft (most cannot stand Windows and use it as a must rather than because they want to) anymore than PlayStation but I do think from the standpoint of PC gaming Microsoft has put more effort into wooing PC gamers and has made more PC gamer friendly decisions when compared to PlayStation. There is also a feeling of arrogance to PlayStation that people will just want their products. There was a quote from Shuhei Yoshida the former head of PlayStation Studios, the same person who make the printing money quote, saying that ‘Releasing on PC does many things: it reaches a new audience who do not own consoles—especially in regions where consoles are not as popular. The idea is that those people may become fans of a particular franchise, and when a new game in that series comes out, they may be convinced to purchase a PlayStation.’ I think PC gamers have proved this to be incorrect but the sheer arrogance thinking that their product was so good that people would just have to buy a PlayStation. This in essence sums PlayStation up and I think there is a rude awakening in the PlayStation leadership and I am not sure they know what to do. They have a captive, fanatical to a point audience that does not like their exclusive games going elsewhere, while at the same time needing to branch out while at the same time as reeling from their live service push that didn’t go the way they wanted. As with Epic and Steam gamers should want both of these console lead companies to do well. The fact that Microsoft and Xbox have caught PlayStation off guard is a good thing for PlayStation gamers as it means they will have to pivot and hopefully this will mean a better outcome for all gamers including us PC gamers.