Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve and one of the most respected players in the video game industry, showed his preferences for the Microsoft console in a recent television interview.
When one of the journalists asked Newell what would be the best console to buy later this year between Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, Valve co-founder bluntly responded «the xbox«. After the journalist expressed his surprise with a “Really?”, Newell launched an expressive, but little objective “Because it is so”, causing some laughter in the audience.
“I have no interest in that career”Newell clarified. “Obviously, we do most of our development on personal computers, but of the two, I would definitely go with the Xbox.”he added.
Gabe Newell: surprising endorsement
A surprising endorsement considering that Microsoft has recently lost a good opportunity to show its presumably general technical advantage over the Sony console, although a faster storage section with the high-speed SSD is expected from the PS5.
Also, Gabe Newell, let’s remember Microsoft employee for 13 years (83-96), has harshly ‘stoked’ Microsoft when considered, being one of the biggest critics of the Windows Store and UWP apps in recent years, or calling Windows 8 a ‘catastrophe’. In this area of criticism, he found a common “friend” in Tim Sweeney (CEO of Epic), but later became one of his biggest rivals in game distribution by creating the Epic Games Store.
In front of Gabe Newell, Sweeney recently endorsed the PlayStation 5, coming to describe it as “God level”. Of course, this was shortly before Sony announced a $ 250 million investment in Epic Games and showed the Unreal Engine 5 on PS5.
You will surely know that in the battle to dominate the next generation of consoles there are so many interests and so unknown that these voices for and against are little or nothing objective. The user will be the one to decide, as always.
So far, the majority forecast among analysts is that Sony will beat Microsoft again in sales. And for quite a distance. PS4 dominated the current generation of consoles from the first minute, and its customers have little reason to change their loyalty, once Sony has vowed to support backward compatibility.
Sony’s ability to turn exclusive games into console vendors (The Last of Us 2, Ghost of Tsushima…) is still unmatched, although Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass content strategy and alleged technical superiority may be increasingly tantalizing for PlayStation fans.
We have a long way to go. And the prices of each console. You will decide the battle.
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