I don’t think anybody wants a monopoly, because it means the leader can stagnate, and honestly that’s already happened. Sony are getting complacent, the big releases are few and far between. We’re all getting less for our money, no matter what team you’re on.

I often buy multiple consoles in a generation, but I didn’t get the Xbox One or Xbox Series consoles, because there’s no reason to, and it’s not because I’ve got an expensive PC either, still being on a 1060. Being late to the game is fine, PS3 did that and ended up selling pretty much as many as the Xbox 360 in the end, but where is that spark from MS? They’ve gambled it all on Game Pass and I’m not sure you can run an entire gaming division on that, same as Netflix couldn’t compete with Hollywood without the box office money. The cloud growth just hasn’t happened for them. It doesn’t feel as good as local play, and I suspect it never will. A PS5 has hit pricing that isn’t really that expensive for fairly casual gamers, although the most casual went mobile ages ago and I doubt they’re coming back.

Xbox hardware is fine, there just isn’t any reason to own it. If it ran Windows and I could install my Steam library on it, I’d have got it on day one, but how does that make MS money? There’s even been noises about the next Xbox allowing Steam, although I don’t know how true that it is. I would guess the only way that can happen is if MS get a chunk of Valve’s money every time somebody buys a game through Steam for Xbox. It’s the only real feature that would get me to buy one right now.