The technical differences between PlayStation and Xbox consoles are so negligible nowadays that one standard home console would benefit games more than the current platform war between Sony and Microsoft, according to a former PlayStation head.
Speaking during a panel held during IGN Live 2024 regarding where we will be playing games in the future, former PlayStation head Shawn Layden commented on the platform war between Sony and Microsoft, saying that if we got it out of the way and had one standard home console, games would be better. Nowadays, technical differences between PlayStation and Xbox are negligible, as both are using the same hardware from AMD.
“Xbox, PlayStation, high-end PC, that’s almost at a plateau where all things being equal, they’re pretty much the same. We’d be in a better world if we could get down to one standard home console technology that we could come together, and get this platform war thing out of the way.”
The former PlayStation head also commented on the console market, which is currently struggling, but this, according to Layden, is nothing new. The global install base in any previous console generation never rose above 250 million, with the only exception being the Wii era, as some software, such as Wii Fit, appealed to an audience that doesn’t usually play games. Those numbers were clearly not sustainable, and the install base went back to the 250 million overall of every other generation. The increased revenue during the pandemic, additionally, did not come from new people entering the console gaming world.
This isn’t the first time in recent times we have heard that Sony and Xbox hardware is essentially the same. Back in April, well-known AMD leaker Kepler talked about how all hardware vendors have converged to very similar designs, and, as such, there’s barely any difference between CPUs and GPUs from different vendors, and optimizing for one vendor essentially applies to all others. With Microsoft opening up to releasing some of its titles to PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, one really has to wonder if the platform war will indeed go away at some point, although Nintendo is unlikely to retire from the hardware market anytime soon, considering how successful its systems continue to be.
