Jesus fucking christ at least wait until exclusive software regularly arrives onto the XBS platform beforesaying they're going to go abandon consoles and go full third party next generation. XBS sales are undeniably dire right now, but the console has also had little to no enticing software that has been consistently released on the platform that are of high quality. 2020 had Flight Simulator, 2021 had Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite and Psychonauts 2, 2022 had literally nothing outside of Pentiment and Grounded, and 2023 so far had Hi-Fi Rush and Redfall.
Out of those, Flight Sim, Forza Horizon 5, Psychonauts 2, Pentiment, Grounded, and Hi-Fi rush had been considered high quality. Which is actually a good amount of high quality titles. However, only flight sim and Forza Horizon 5 can be considered system sellers and the two games are frankly in relatively niche genres (flight simulators and racing). They're certainly large but those two niches alone in two releases can't carry the system to good hardware sales. The others are significantly more niche and exist more or less as nice to haves. They can't sell tons of system on their own and are more supplements. Especially games like Pentiment which is just inherently really niche. Halo Infinite had a good start but ameanic updates to the multiplayer along with a lack of content and growing dissatisfaction knee capped any future growth of the game. Redfall was just bad. Those two AAA productions faltering has undeniably reinforced the idea that Xbox has no big games worth playing.
The Xbox game pipeline appears to be improving over the latter half of this year, starting with Starfield and Forza Motorsport. If Xbox hardware sales over financial year 24 continue to lower and go below even financial year 23 then yeah, Xbox is toast this year. If momentum improves with the increase of regular software output of large AAA games, especially when they're well reviewed, then I believe we will see Xbox hardware sales improve as the platform becomes more enticing rather then it being a worse PlayStation in terms of interesting software exclusive to it.
Edited in reply:
I don't actually think 2024 is necessarily guaranteed to be a bigger year for the PlayStation brand due to a lack of upcoming games for the PlayStation system. This year was fairly light, but of course they've had momentum over last few years, Xbox struggling, marketing rights of huge brands in Europe such as Fifa and COD (one of which they'll likely lose next year or even possibly this year), and Spiderman 2 (which on pure brand power of Spiderman himself is going to sell blockbusters), but in 2024 there isn't really any upcoming PlayStation exclusives we know of. As well, it's the year in which Sony possibly loses Call of Duty marketing (if the MSFT-Activision merger goes through) and their competitor, Xbox, should have a larger and more consistent software output. I mean, as niche as it is, for flight sim fans a new flight sim next year is a fairly big deal as an example.
Now, this is my own personal feelings based on things I've read, not necesarily me making a strong prediction of the future. PlayStation can likely easily continue their dominance streak next year even with less software, possibly the end of Call of Duty marketing rights, and increased competition from Xbox, but I would be less bullish. It's still very likely going to be a big year, just smaller then this year to some degree in my opinion
