That’s because all they had for decades was the anti-consumer practice of console exclusivity. That has been the sole reason for the lack of some games on some of the platforms.

And they’re also in the process of porting all the PlayStation exclusives over to PC, making all the consoles completely pointless.

videogames as the youngest of all media is obviously going to get hit the hardest by capitalism draining it of its lifeblood for the last few percentages of profit. the only thing that has seen actual progress in videogame design is how “engaging” (or psychologically manipulative and addictive) they can make them and for that you don’t need any technological prowess (although the idea of technological progress leading in any linear way to more innovation has always been suspect to me, gamers only being able to imagine “more destruction” and “better ai” as markers of progress seems emblematic of that fact)

if games like the newest god of war (ostensibly a serious story driven game) needs a seven people “player investment design team”, celebrated games like “death stranding” are gamified like any mobile or clicker game and even indie devs make “pls lobotomize me for the next thirty minutes” stuff like vampire survivors you can basically give up on the medium. there’s no ambition in any of these companies that goes above “we need to get those engagement numbers up”. and if engagement is the goal, it’s stupid to make more games than you need to. you can only play one game at a time.

the only devs i have any interest in nowadays are fromsoft and nintendo (and that’s only the nintendo that makes mario and zelda games) and maybe the occasional indie game (although they mostly suck too)

Its the first time really that the consoles haven’t actually differed that much and been backwards compatible.

Like yeah the ps2 could play ps1 games but the jump in graphics was so massive that no developer was making cross platform games. Ps3 was another generational leap but also changed hardware a lot making backwards compat not really a thing and same for ps4.

Now ps4 and 5 are basically the same console developers stand very little to lose releasing their game on both platforms. Making an exclusive for the newer console which sold pretty poorly on both sides with still massive previous gen active user bases you’d basically be shooting yourself in the foot making a current gen only game.

As a business I’d want my game to cover as many platforms as possible so the ps4 or switch is gonna be the base target depending on what I would be making.

This ps5 almost feels like a waste of 500 bucks

that’s cause it is