Those were the days when paid Xbox Live service was way better than the free PS network. If you wanted to play online, the experience was much better on Xbox. Sony’s online experience has vastly improved since then, and their first-party games are generally considered much higher quality than Microsoft’s alternatives.
This explains how Sony clawed back market share in the second half of the PS3 gen, but you’re missing one crucial detail: the Xbox One. One cannot overstate how badly Microsoft misread the room and flubbed the reveal of the XbOne. The all-digital announcement in a time when physical games were still king, the required Kinect, the always-online requirement…they basically wrote the playbook on how to piss off reddit gamers. Sony had built up good will by becoming more pro-consumer over the PS3 gen, so then all they had to do in 2013 was say “the PS4 is just like the PS3 but better” and they were heralded as the saviors of gaming.
Those were the days when paid Xbox Live service was way better than the free PS network. If you wanted to play online, the experience was much better on Xbox. Sony’s online experience has vastly improved since then, and their first-party games are generally considered much higher quality than Microsoft’s alternatives.
This explains how Sony clawed back market share in the second half of the PS3 gen, but you’re missing one crucial detail: the Xbox One. One cannot overstate how badly Microsoft misread the room and flubbed the reveal of the XbOne. The all-digital announcement in a time when physical games were still king, the required Kinect, the always-online requirement…they basically wrote the playbook on how to piss off reddit gamers. Sony had built up good will by becoming more pro-consumer over the PS3 gen, so then all they had to do in 2013 was say “the PS4 is just like the PS3 but better” and they were heralded as the saviors of gaming.