When Sony's PlayStation 5, Microsoft's Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S video game consoles hit stores in November, companies will be talking about all the new technologies that are driving them. New storage systems that load games faster, new graphics chips that offer games even more detailed graphics and support for immersive surround sound.
With thin lists of exclusive launch titles, the biggest selling point of these new consoles is how they leverage your love of older games.
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Throughout the summer, Sony and Microsoft continued to focus on their back catalogs of fan favorite games. In some cases, companies say they are being updated or redesigned to look better and play with their new systems faster.
For Sony, these are games like God of War and Marvel's Spider-Man, both of which were released in 2018 and will soon be released on the PS5. There's also the 2013 post-apocalyptic shooter The Last of Us, which was originally released on PS3 in 2013 and remastered for PS4 a year later. The three titles, plus a few more, are free to PS5 owners through the PlayStation Plus collection and are offered for $ 9.99 per month.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has the gritty Gears 5 shooter, the 2018 racing title Forza Horizon 4, and its online adventure game Sea of Thieves. Microsoft has also created a service called Smart Delivery, which guarantees owners of this and other Xbox One games that they will receive updated versions of their Series X / S for free.
That reliance on older games is part of a broader trend to capitalize on your nostalgia for extra income. Offering old hits also helps Microsoft and Sony give people more choices when they first buy their new consoles. That justifies investing in a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X, both of which cost $ 500 with a drive. Without them, Sony's most anticipated launch title is Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, a spin-off and not quite a sequel to Spider-Man from 2018. Microsoft had its headline game, the action-adventure Halo: Infinite, until the next Move year.
Executives from both companies have also trumped their back catalogs.
"What we've always been proud of and that we believe our games stand for was a sense of narration and a celebration of the art of storytelling," said PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, in an interview earlier this summer.
"We want you to be able to experience as many great games as possible," said Xbox boss Phil Spencer said during an announcement in July.
Retro fad
That reliance on nostalgia is a strategy the music, television, and film industries have relied on for years as they reboot and redesign franchises from DC's Superman to Mamma Mia, a movie whose music is by Swedish pop group Abba dates from the 1970s. Spider-Man alone has gone through three Hollywood reboots since 2002, and the most recent iteration was the most lucrative.
In the video game world, we see fewer remixes or reboots. These days, successful games are remastered to work on new devices. That strategy worked for Take-Two Interactive, which grossed an estimated $ 595 million from Grand Theft Auto 5 for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and more in 2019. That's six years after the game originally launched on PS3 and Xbox 360. Take-Two intends to restart the game on PS5 and Series X / S as well.
It's not just Sony and Microsoft. One of Nintendo's major releases this holiday season is Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a collection of some of the character's most popular games: Super Mario 64 from 1996, Super Mario Sunshine from 2002, and Super Mario Galaxy from 2007 with Upgrades to the console video game Switch HD graphics. It was released on Friday.
Future proof
One of the main reasons Sony and Microsoft have been willing to port games from this generation to the next is because it's easier to do than before. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One games from 2013 were developed using the same chips as standard PCs. This common x86 architecture, as it's called, means apps effectively speak the same language in code, making it easy to switch between devices.
Before these latest consoles, Sony and Microsoft used x86 alternatives, which made it significantly more difficult to move old games to new devices. Corporations have done this in a limited way, but obviously such ports have often been too tedious and expensive to justify.
Companies now only have larger catalogs than they did a decade ago. "In 1995 the oldest person to play games was probably 20 years old, in 2005 they were 30 years old, now they are 40 years old and 40-year-olds have a lot of nostalgia for what they used to play," he said Michael Pachter, Analyst at Wedbush Securities.
In addition to Microsoft and Sony marketing their older games as part of the appeal for their new consoles, Pachter also expects more games to be remastered. "There has never been a Grand Theft Auto collection," he said, noting that the game has gone through more than seven major iterations, most of which have received critical acclaim.
When the PS5 and Xbox series X / S consoles hit store shelves, they'll work with an existing library of thousands of games.
Sony and Microsoft are not stuck in the past. The latter hopes that Halo: Infinite, which launches early next year, will make the X / S series a must-have. It also works with Project xCloud, a cutting-edge gaming service that lets you play even the toughest console games on your phone. Sony is betting even more on exclusive titles like the recently announced and God of War 2: Ragnarok, which will be released in 2021, and Final Fantasy 16, which has no public release date.
Right now, nostalgia is bringing Sony and Microsoft into a new generation. And it's a trend that is likely to stay here.
