Pay to win

As confusion reigns around new consoles, Microsoft’s money makes the clearest statement of the generation so far

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We’ll be candid, because somebody has to be: our next-generation transition has not exactly been going swimmingly. In all fairness, we imagine much of the rest of the industry, from the CEOs to the developers to the marketing teams and beyond, might say the same thing. The arrival of COVID-19 has thrown even the best-laid plans into disarray, and everyone has scrambled to readjust. But never have we experienced such a dearth of information when it comes to the new consoles from Sony and Microsoft.

Normally, we’d have had at least a few opportunities – E3, absent this year, being the big one – to speak with the top execs on both sides by now, to quiz them on the finer details of the machines and the strategies around them. We’d also likely have had the chance to go hands-on with each machine, and to make a considered assessment. On the cover of E256, a full five months out from launch, we were able to show you a PS4 and tell you: “This is your next console”. At present, we’re not sure what to say. It’s indicative of the most confusing transition period ever, thanks in part due to the administrative grenade that is the global pandemic, but also the increasingly fine differences between the current generation and the next.