I own a PS5 (and an XSX) and I'm pretty happy with my PlayStation as a gaming machine.
That said, it does feel like more of the same from Sony. A safe step forward from the PS4. It doesn't feel to me like something that will disrupt the market, or even something that will grow the market.
The minor innovation on the controller does very little for me personally, and the SSD (which they may have anticipated as being their major USP over the competition) has been rather blindsided by the XSX's excellent Quick Resume feature.
Meanwhile in the face of fierce value proposition from Game Pass, Sony have chosen to up the cost of games. Should they be surprised that Demon Souls, Returnal and Ratchet & Clank have arguably underperformed. Even God Of War: Ragnarok, which we would all peg as a sure fire smash, showed its trailer and looked to be a case of 'same again'. There are big moves and acquisitions taking place in the gaming industry, and I'm not sure that 'same again' will work, and perhaps Sony needs to be fleeter footed at adapting and more innovative in its thinking. Add to this a few small annoyances that may test the goodwill of their customers; backwards compat, upgrade paths, censorship, etc.
Sony have announced that they are doubling down on VR but whether that will be a successful strategy or an expensive dead end remains to be seen.
This isn't about console warring or putting the boot in, and there will be many things behind the scenes at Sony that we're not privy to, but as a bystander like myself do you think Sony's current strategy is on point or are there things that need to change?
So you state, its a "safe step forward" from the PS4.
Yet they produced a completely new controller with haptic feedback and new trigger mechanism which already did a tonne more than the standard xbox controller, Xbox did practically nothing new for the controller. This is seen as a "minor innovation"
They added 3 x 10Gbps Usb superspeed ports (usb 3.1 gen 2) and Wifi-6, literally the fastest usb ports and wifi available on the market, but lets neatly forget about this, what does xbox have ?
They created a new I/O complex trying to eliminate bottlenecks from disk directly to APU and new hw based compression techniques which in some cases has drastically reduced the storage size of games.
They have committed to VR, a completely different way to play games and providing a virtual reality interface - cutting edge tech on consoles.
They were one of the first to jump into streaming and have provided backwards compatibility via streaming since then and hold most of the patents around the tech thanks to purchasing onlive and GaiKai.
This is all considered "Safe" - Sony are investing heavily in tech and different ways to play - this is the very definition of risk - they are spending money researching and developing new vr headsets, in new ssd tech new ways to use a controller.
What has Microsoft done exactly ? What new innovative thing have they actually done ? Bought a bunch of game studios and a publisher ? Is that "risky", is that "innovative" ? what about gamepass - a service designed to bleed their competitors dry, based on stuff done by Netflix for Movies and Spotify for Music (both of which have now got about 10 rivals) is this truly "innovative" and / or "risky" ?
What is it that makes you believe Sony isnt taking any risks and Microsoft is ?