Before a lead-filled Christmas, both Sony and Microsoft claim shooter supremacy for their consoles Xbox One and Playstation 4.
For those who haven’t noticed: Christmas is approaching rapidly, and now the big hits of the year are coming, the newest installments of the shooter franchises, just in time for the holiday season: Halo, Call of Duty, Battlefront – and also games like Fallout 4 with shooter elements have either been released or are just around the corner.
This is how PS4 and Xbox One want to claim the shooter throne
Both current-gen consoles claim for themselves, “We are the shooter console.” So it’s clear for Aaron Greenberg from Microsoft that shooters are the number one genre. And anyone who wants to play Halo, Gears of War, and Call of Duty, along with Battlefront, can only do so on the Xbox One.
Halo 5 is an Xbox-exclusive title, and Gears of War 4 is also supposed to be released only for Xbox One.
At Sony, they see it differently. “In this generation, the shooter audience is moving to the Playstation 4,” says Sony representative Lauren Bradley in a recent interview. Special attention is placed on Star Wars Battlefront. They reportedly had tears in their eyes when the Battlefront Sony spot aired, so moved were they at Sony. The spot fits perfectly with the nostalgia of the twentieth anniversary of the Playstation.
Sony, as evident from the spot, is focusing on exclusive marketing deals rather than exclusive titles in the console war for shooter players. For example, Sony lures with Call of Duty with map packs that come a month earlier, and with Destiny, they made a deal with Bungie, so that players on PS3 and PS4 get some extra content.
For years, both consoles have been vying for exclusive deals with the major shooter franchises. If one company has a beta exclusive, the other must follow up with exclusive DLC for the next game.
Shooter War under the Christmas Tree
My MMO thinks: If one looks at this with open eyes, the players are the ones suffering in this console war for shooter supremacy. Because consoles are currently luring their followers on both sides with “exclusive” deals. So essentially with game content that is finished, but is withheld from the followers of the other console for a certain period or even forever.
Or there are exclusive titles that friends of the other console cannot play at all, even though there would surely be a target audience for them. All of this leads to intense tensions among the fan groups of both consoles.
For hardcore fans, the players and heads of the other console are the villains taking away their fun. People then like to tally up what the other group has done wrong, what they have taken liberties with, and what they have mocked, while pointing out that it is absolutely legitimate that they now also have something exclusive.
Well, what is the festival of love for some is the most important battle of the year for others in a war that seemingly has no end. Merry Christmas.
