Video games are still video games. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are still the main platforms.

Microsoft is trying to reason about how gaming fits into their computer-centric empire. They've been using the Xbox brand for a new gamepad shell in Windows, for their cloud gaming subscription service, and for the gaming section of the Windows Store.

Steam has built the most popular computer game download service. They're renowned for having sales - you can get the Arkham Trilogy for $5 with some regularity when it would cost you $30 on Nintendo's eShop. It's a meme that most Steam users end up impulse-buying hundreds of cheap games and only playing dozens of them.

Microsoft and Sony have both bought a lot of previously-independent game studios. They've often let them continue publishing on other platforms. For instance, Sony's Spider-Man games are also available on Steam.

There are rumors that amid Microsoft's clusterfuck of an Xbox strategy, the next Xbox is going to share a lot of infrastructure with Windows, including the ability to play Windows games. This has spooked Sony into pulling its new titles from Steam - they don't want people buying an Xbox to play Spider-Man games.

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SchemaLoad an hour ago | parent | next [-]

This is fairly outdated, it was certainly true in 2013 but these days xbox is pretty much dead, playstation is stable but flat for a long time, PC has overtaken both, and mobile has shot to the moon.

The Steam Machine is a very niche product, but PC gaming is the main gaming platform outside of phone games.

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WhereIsTheTruth 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> This has spooked Sony into pulling its new titles from Steam - they don't want people buying an Xbox to play Spider-Man games

That's not what happened, Sony's decision is more about the poor saels of its single player titles on Steam, they are now focusing their PC releases for online multiplayer games instead

Microsoft sells less consoles each month than the previous gen Nintendo Switch sells today

A lot of publishers are skipping Xbox, citing not enough players/sales

They have nothing to worry about Xbox

https://i.imgur.com/TrI3q6e.png

	▲	bsimpson 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		SteamDB estimates SM sold 4MM copies on Steam, SM 1.5 sold 2MM, and SM2 sold 1.25MM. 1.5 years ago, the developer announced that SM2 had sold 10MM copies on PS5 and the franchise had sold 50MM copies overall: https://x.com/insomniacgames/status/1757662718604013868 https://steamdb.info/app/1817070/charts/ https://steamdb.info/app/1817190/charts/ https://steamdb.info/app/2651280/charts/
	▲	MBCook 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Which makes sense. Exclusives is basically the best reason for buying a PlayStation, so if they stick them all on PC, that’s not gonna help them much. As you’ve said, Microsoft is basically toast. They’ve been sinking for multiple generations.