Xbox and PlayStation have a lot to prove

Things are bad there.

Although 2026 looks like it will be a great year when it comes to that actual gamesit really couldn’t be worse for the people who make them or the industry as a whole. Device prices continue to rise, The layoffs show no signs of stoppingand Even big-budget titles backed by big companies can feel risky.

All of this makes for a rather difficult time for Summer Game Fest, a week-long spectacle of events that begins on Tuesday. Flashy ads will do little to stem negative sentiment around the industry. But given The difficult case for console games in particularboth Microsoft and Sony have an opportunity to show gamers why these increasingly expensive boxes should be purchased.

Let’s start with Sony. On June 2, the company will live stream the latest State of Play with “over 60 minutes of news and announcements for games coming to PS5,” headlined by Insomniac’s Wolverine, Which starts in September.

Sony is dealing with two major problems at the moment. The first is that the PS5 is very expensive: the base console costs $499 at launch; It has since jumped to $649while the most expensive model is priced at $899. This steady rise in prices had a major impact. With PS5 sales down nearly 50 percent year-on-year. Sony recently It shifted its strategy back to focusing on console exclusivesAfter a few years of getting into PC gaming, it would take a few big companies to sell people the PS5 at its current price.

The other problem is the games themselves. Like much of the industry, Sony has made a big bet on live service games in an attempt to emulate the enduring and lucrative success of online giants like fortnite. But the results were disastrous for the industry as a whole And Sony in particular. The company’s largest investment was in the company’s live service Spending $3.6 billion to buy amount Developer: Bungie In 2022. Since then, Bungie has been hit by Multiple rounds of layoffsstudio Announced plans to end support for Destiny 2And he was released Marathon, A struggling online hardcore shooter In a very volatile market until fortnite He’s having problems.

The problem isn’t just that there’s a lot of room for games in the live service space. Sony has also largely built its recent reputation on lavish single-player titles. People buy a PlayStation to play God of war or The last of usno Afflicted Concord or whatever Fair games He is. The State of Play report needs to make clear that Sony has moved on from those mistakes, and is ready to focus on what it does best. Wolverine game from the back team Spider-Man It’s a good start, we already know The last of us Naughty Dog studio is working on it A new science fiction world. But Sony will need more than that to reestablish PlayStation as the home of these premium experiences.

Xbox, on the other hand, has more existential concerns. Yes, she had to deal with rising prices like everyone else, both for her sake and for his own sake Her devices And Game Pass subscription service. (Although it recently got a rare price cut.) But the main problem with Xbox is that No one really knows what it is. Microsoft has spent years diluting the brand through… Ill-conceived marketing campaigns, Multi-platform launch strategiesand Hardware initiatives are confusing.

after Unexpected executive change in AprilThings seem to be changing, but we don’t know how much yet. New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has been doing and saying the right things so far. Eliminate things players hate and They seem to listen to what they want from the brand. Many of these changes, Like rebranding in capital letters for the word Xboxcompletely superficial. But they at least seem to indicate that a larger positive shift is coming.

The SGF would be a perfect place to show that. Microsoft’s event — dubbed Xbox Games Showcase, which will stream on June 7 at 1 p.m. ET — needs to have games and games that you can only play on Xbox. The company has actually been in fairly strong shape recently, launching everything from Open world racer Forza Horizon 6 to Goofy competitive game oven. But if you were to hail this moment as “Xbox is back“, which is what Sharma did, you would need a lot more than that to make a statement. This means that the big games we already know – myth, Gears of War: Electronic Day, the aura remake – And also surprises.

Xbox and PlayStation aren’t the only ones suffering right now. Almost everyone, from major publishers to independent studios, is feeling the crisis in some way. nintendo, Which often works in its own parallel worldIt was forced to change its approach in dealing with these external forces Likewise, Valve has seen its major hardware plans disrupted. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the elephant in the room, Grand Theft Auto VIwhich will launch in November and will likely lead to some sort of spike in console sales, representing a temporary relief.

But the risks are particularly high for Sony and Microsoft. It’s been six years since the current generation of gaming consoles, which is usually what happens when these consoles become a hit and people start wondering what’s coming next. While there was already talk about it PS6 And “Xbox”Helix project“, There’s also very little hype around either, which isn’t surprising given how things are going right now. Just the thought of how much a next-gen gaming console might cost is enough to scare anyone away.

That’s why console makers need to spend their short stints in the SGF focusing on the here and now: there’s no getting around the fact that everything is more expensive, but there’s at least a chance to prove that those prices are worth it.