Jim Ryan Doubts Xbox One X’s Impact

On paper, the Xbox One X is far superior than the PS4 Pro and should as a result have the best versions of third party multi-platform games. However, European Sony boss, Jim Ryan, reminds us that third parties did not take advantage of the strongest console's power last generation. Multi-platform games were virtually the same across both the PS3 and Xbox 360 during the entirety of the cycle.

Jim Ryan Doubts Xbox One X's Impact
The impressive 4K behemoth Xbox One X will hit stores in November 2017 after having been officially unveiled at E3 2017. Microsoft's console is considerably more powerful than its closest competitor the PS4 Pro. Due to its stronger specifications, there is no question that the best looking and best performing games for the remainder of the generation should be Xbox One X games. However, Sony's European boss, Jim Ryan, is very skeptical about the impact that the Xbox One X will have. He had the following to say regarding how third parties may approach the new scenario with their multi-platform game releases,

I'm not going to go into the detail of what's embedded into individual contracts with publishing partners. What I would do is cast our minds back to the PS3 generation, where we had on paper more impressive specifications than our competition, and in some areas by quite a considerable margin.

Now, that didn't play out the way we had anticipated it would – and this is nothing to do with co-marketing deals, this is just generational developer and publisher dynamics.

What happened was that developers, maybe at the behest of publishers, developed up to the lowest common denominator and stopped there. And in very few cases took advantage of the additional horsepower of the PS3.

Jim Ryan made some very interesting points. The PS3 was indeed more powerful than the Xbox 360 as titles such as God of War 3, Uncharted 3, Beyond: Two Souls or The Last of Us could demonstrate. Third parties largely ignored the power of the PS3 and made what were mostly identical versions across the PS3 and X360. That was a time when the PS3 was trailing in third place until the very last few years of the generation where it, in turn, left the X360 behind instead. Now, the PS4 is the market leader by a considerable margin and the chances of third parties using additional time to make specifically better Xbox One X versions of games may be slim to none. Time will tell how all this will play out I'm sure.

Do our readers think this generation will be different than last one and so third parties will make better versions of games for the strongest hardware this time? Let us know below. 

2 Comments

  1. Avatar photo

    He makes a very good point.

     

     

    In short, third-parties will almost always take the laziest route. So lowest common denominator is right.

     

     

    We’re getting 4K patches/updates/improvements, which are going to be about the same across the board. What will most be impacted is the first-party titles.

    Reply
    • Avatar photo

      I think every gen is the same story. Only first party pushes the hardware with some rare exceptions. Since Microsoft has a very small amount of first party, I imagine that the Xbox One X will take some time to reach its true potential if it even ever does.

      Reply

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