Are the "Console Wars" About to Kick Off Again? | Unpacked

I have to say I agree. I’m not a PC gamer even though I have a fairly alright laptop, but I have a Switch 2 and PS5 because there’s games there (or going to be in S2’s case) I can’t get elsewhere. To put it as a bit of a reverse of the normal argument, there’s never been a PC exclusive that has made me need to heavily invest in it, and since moving away from multiplayer games my Steam and Epic accounts are just gathering dust. Meanwhile if Stranger than Heaven or a big new Kojima game were Xbox exclusive, it’s pretty much the only thing that could tempt me to buy one. Make a good enough exclusive, people will buy the console rather than spend double that on a PC. Share them out, then why wouldn’t they buy a PC that plays them all and costs less than 3 consoles?

Who is the girl on the right it's bugging me.

My sweet Summer child yearning for the old console wars as an alternative to the current 'woke' rage-cycle, when we all know that a 2026-console war would just be based on which platform's exclusives are most 'woke' instead.

Nick is going to have a *lot* to talk about with Destiny 2 getting canned and Bungie revealing they're going to lay off a lot of people "soon"

There's something in the air around the console space all right . . . it's the stink of desperation. You might say that consoles pushing exclusives might bolster competitiveness and spark exciting new titles. I would say the indie studios are already doing that. When you have indie studios making highly polished and/or innovative and/or endlessly replayable fare for $20-30, Sony and Microsoft are going to have to make something drop-dead amazing to justify not only the studios they acquire to shareholders, but also the $70-80 price tag to gamers. Trying to justify consoles to either party on top of that seems like a fool's errand. It is not time for console wars; it is time for console extinction.

Are consoles still relevant? I’m perfectly happy never buying a console again. I like their first party games, and happy for them to produce great stuff, I just don’t need more hardware that is single use….

Wasn't there a ruling that movie studios can't own cinemas? Whats the difference to console exclusives? Apart from one minor comment, you claim that exclusives will somehow mean a net-positive for users (not companies), but the only concrete benefits mentioned were "more enthusiasm for the platform" and "bringing back console-wars". The argument around better competition doesn't convince me either. What's better competition than the hardware price/performance ratio? If that ruling on cinemas didn't exist, would we be talking about how Disney needs to stop showing Marvel movies outside their theaters?

I just hope they don't go back to buying up studios to make their game sequels console exclusive.