Theoretically, we’re less than three months away from the start of a new generation of consoles, but you wouldn’t bloody know it from what’s been announced so far. We’ve seen plenty of next-gen games with no release dates, an abundance of pictures of consoles and controllers and hell, even deep dives into the tech inside the machines, but what about the launch details we really need? What are we playing? When are we playing it? Do we need to get a second job to afford it? That’s as clear as mud.

Normally in the lead up to the launch of a new console, we would have had most of these details by now. In fact, we’d likely have had preorders opened a couple of months ago in an ordinary lead up to a console launch. Obviously, 2020 isn’t the normal lead up to a console launch. We had weakening economies worldwide that already looked to be on the verge of recession that were then stomped on by COVID and all that global pandemic have entailed. Immeasurable numbers of people around the world have lost their livelihoods as industries have shut down and countries have been decimated. Things have gone wrong on a global scale and many, many people will struggle to pull together the cash required for a new console that little bit more than they probably would have twelve months ago.

With that in mind, you would think that having details out early, allowing people more time to save towards a new console with a specific goal in mind would be the way to go, right? Get people prepared for your next-gen launch early. Well, PlayStation and Xbox squarely disagree. You see, they’re both seemingly so fixated on what the other is doing that they don’t really care about those people at all.

It makes sense. Both PlayStation and Xbox have been one upped by the other party over the last two generations. First we had the world of $599 and executives saying people would get second jobs to afford a PlayStation 3. Then we had the catastrophic Xbox One reveal, with its message of ‘if you don’t have reliable internet, get a 360’ and the mocking and price beating that came from the PlayStation 4. They don’t want the same thing to happen again with another next-gen launch.

Now, both parties are seemingly terrified of the other and being undercut by their competitor. However, given their differing strategies and positions, that sounds like crap to me. PlayStation is utterly dominating the market and even if they’re undercut, it would take a catastrophic mistake of their own for them to lose a substantial amount of market share at this point. Xbox and Phil Spencer have been clear themselves that their focus isn’t on selling consoles more at all, but getting you attached to their services. So why are they afraid of the other undercutting them? The answer: they’re not. They simply want to charge the most money they possibly can. I don’t believe for a second that PlayStation is worried about losing market share to Microsoft. They know you’ll buy their console regardless of their competitors price, but they want to extract the most money from you they can. Similarly, Microsoft don’t care if you buy their console or buy their games on other platforms or services like XCloud, but if you are buying a console, they want to get the most money out of you as possible.

That’s why this is truly rotten. Each company is so fixated on making the most cash, as is their prerogative and purpose as a corporation, that they’re willing to put their fan base under financial stress with a short lead time from price confirmation and launch to make it happen. They don’t care about you or me. All they care about is cash and they couldn’t care less what you have to go through to get it, as long as it then lines their pockets.