Featured Image Credit: JL Images / Alamy Stock Photo/Mohsen Vaziri / Alamy Stock Photo
Topics: Xbox, PlayStation, Gaming
Callum Jones
Topics: Xbox, PlayStation, Gaming
Gamers are well aware of the console wars between Xbox and PlayStation, with fans of either console never wanting to be on the losing side.
Even Nintendo are part of this discussion, with their impressive Switch portable console doing big numbers in the gaming space.
While Xbox have certainly clawed things back with the Xbox Series X and S, the last console generation - Xbox One - was quite frankly a disaster for Microsoft.
Before the Xbox One was released in 2013, Microsoft went big on the entertainment aspect of the console, without actually touching on games.
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And let's be honest, you are not buying a games console to solely watch Netflix on are you?
From that, the Xbox One never really recovered, with Microsoft languishing behind PlayStation and Nintendo on all metrics.
Now, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has opened up on console wars, and how the company lost them to PlayStation with the Xbox One.
Speaking with Kinda Funny Games on their Xbox podcast Xcast, Spencer said: "The truth of the matter is, when you're third place in the console marketplace and the top two players are as strong as they are and have in certain cases a very discrete focus on doing deals and other things that kind of make being Xbox hard for us as a team – that's on us, not on anybody else."
Spencer then admitted that Xbox can't beat Nintendo or PlayStation with conventional strategies, instead focusing on making unique gaming experiences for its players.
"I see it out there. I see commentary that if you just build great games, everything would turn around," Spencer continued.
"It's just not true that if we go off and build great games, suddenly you're going to see console share shift in some dramatic way. We lost the worst generation to lose in the Xbox One generation, where everybody built their digital library of games.
"This idea that if we just focused more on great games on our console, that somehow we're going to win the console race, I think doesn't relate to the reality of most people."
He concluded: "We're not in the business of out-consoling Sony or out-consoling Nintendo. There isn't really a great solution or win for us.
"But I know some people want to hold us up as being a better green version of what the blue guys do, and I'm just going to say there's not a win for Xbox in staying in the wake of somebody else.
"We have to go off and do our own thing with Game Pass, with the stuff we do with Xcloud, and the way we build our games."