Next-Gen Won’t Be a “Head-to-Head Bout” Between Xbox Series X and PS5, Says Microsoft

In an interview with MCV, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty has shared thoughts about the next-generation competition between Xbox Series X and PS5, and praised Sony’s efforts on PlayStation 4 and its library over the last six years.

In an interview with MCV, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty has shared thoughts about the next-generation competition between Xbox Series X and PS5 and praised Sony’s efforts on PlayStation 4 and its library over the last six years.

According to Matt Booty, “Sony’s done a fantastic job just across the board in terms of what they’ve done with building an audience, selling consoles, obviously, a number of amazing, great games that have come out of their first-party teams.”

Games like 2018’s God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Bloodborne, Detroit: Become Human and others that are yet to be released like Ghost of Tsushima and The Last of Us Part II have made it clear that PlayStation has been doing much better in terms of exclusive content compared to Xbox.

Matt Booty added that the Redmond platform owner doesn’t see the next generation as a competition between Sony and Microsoft, as Xbox teams want to make sure they do their things right at first and then look at what others are doing in the same space.

“I try to stay away from framing things as a head-to-head bout with Sony, instead I think that it’s just up to us to focus on three things,” he said.

“First of all, we need to deliver on the promises that we make,” he shared, talking about Microsoft has to strive to do better compared with the current-gen, where games like Scalebound were cancelled and studios were closed. “So if we say a game is going to ship at a certain time, we’ve got to get that done, we just need to get better at executing.”

On top of that, “we need to make sure that we hold the bar high on quality, and that we’re releasing games that we can be proud of and that the fans can be proud of as Xbox exclusives. And then lastly, we need to continue building characters, stories and worlds that can transcend generations, devices and platforms.”

The next generation competition will see Microsoft and Sony take different approaches, especially for what matters the transition from Xbox One and PS4 to Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. As we’ve recently heard, PS5 will reportedly have exclusive next-gen games right away, while Xbox is focused on having its titles on the most significant amount of devices possible for at least one year from launch.