Coronavirus will hurt PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X

Most of the news around coronavirus has been painfully negative. There has been one small glow of hope: the backlog has taken a bashing.

Sunny afternoons with soft drinks, ice cream, a cool breeze and an afternoon playing a favourite game felt like a thing of the past, but 2020 has offered it in spades. I can only talk for myself – I’d still need another six or seven years of this to make a dent – but overall that has felt pretty good.

In fact, the gaming industry seems to be one of the areas that has been helped by the pandemic. Games have increased by more than 30 per cent in America over last year, with console sales skyrocketing to nearly 65 per cent. Entertainment has become a vital staple in lockdown life.

We need realism though. The short-term financial benefits to parts of the industry will hit our next-gen experiences very soon.

Life in lockdown: coronavirus and video games

It has been an odd year for video games. Some great titles have been released, albeit delayed in cases. And even those who haven’t bought a single new title this year have probably had more time to play.

And yet all the excitement of it being a next-gen year has been marred by canceled events and difficult marketing. The loss of E3 should have presented opportunities for both console manufacturers to really make it their own, but both arguably failed to push their advantages. Why? Because life in lockdown is better for the player than the developer.

And so rumblings of which console is better, what will work best where, have come from less traditional sources. The rumour mill has been running full blast during coronavirus, and it hasn’t helped a single thing.

The latest – that Resident Evil 8 was struggling to run at 1080p and 60fps on PS5 – is the latest to be tossed into the world. I’m not calling out the originator of this rumour – I think it’s probably true in context. Rather, we need to blame the churning that comes from fanboys after the fact.

But then this rumour is “refuted” with other rumours – “BUT DEVELOPERS SAID PLAYSTATION IS SO EASY TO CREATE GAMES FOR.”

And on and on the wheel goes. Next-gen becomes overhyped and we’re all disappointed by a perfectly good standard of games come launch.

Generation nine and the financial crash

The next couple of years are going to be tough. We are potentially facing the toughest time any of us have ever known, or, on a societal level, that our ancestors have ever known.

So it’s a great time to release a $500 PlayStation 5.

I’m only being slightly flippant. Games consoles are amazing value, especially when you factor in subscription services, and more people will play games than go regularly to the cinema or eat out.

But there is a kernel of truth to the sarcasm. It isn’t a good time to be releasing something at a premium. Will it stop it selling out? No, but it might hit supply chains next year, and by then who knows where we’ll be?

The games are going to be harder hit. In the first instance, countless games have been pushed back as a result of this happening. Around 40 titles are listed as having been pushed back, and that’s just announced games. If you think publishers haven’t been eyeing their lists for next year, you have to be insane.

What does that matter? A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad, right?

Miyamoto was spot on when he said that, but he also wasn’t saying it in the middle of a global pandemic. With people spending less money on games, the chances of a publisher taking risks goes down and we end up with Call of Mario 14.5 Remix: Special Edition: Remastered.

I can’t wait to play it again.

This isn’t something we’ll see immediately, because the games we know about now have been in development for several years already. Give it three or four years, and we’ll start to see the impact of this stuff on that.

Bouncing back

All of this stuff is going to impact the industry in the coming decade. For those that make gaming a priority, this is going to be a great generation. There are people less interested, less willing to part with their hard-earned money for a chunk of entertainment. This is especially true in parts of Asia, where the games console is being replaced by mobile phones at a much higher rate.

So what happens? What impact will this have on the industry? It’s impossible to guess. With a second wave rising over Europe and America still not even able to contain its first one, most people could find themselves back where they were a few months ago. Any day now.

A second wave would bring with it many more tragic deaths, many more closed businesses and less money to spend on frivolities.

There’s still a lot to be seen, but the industry will bounce back. It has survived crashes before, and there’s more interest now than ever. The existence of the Series S, cloud services and similar will ensure easy entry for the time being. That’s a lucky thing for those behind these services, especially xCloud.

But it could get worse before it gets better, and we’ll all end up feeling the brunt of it.