It’s not unusual that we see bitter competitors like Microsoft and Sony encouraging or congratulating one another. But in a nice gesture of goodwill, Phil Spencer has congratulated Sony for Uncharted 4’s greatness… After all, Nathan Drake’s latest adventure is a superb game all round, with stunning graphics and gameplay, and has turned out to be one of the PS4s top exclusives of the year.
And no doubt Spencer, who is the boss of Microsoft’s Xbox Division, has shown a touch of class by congratulating developer Naughty Dog and Sony president Shuhei Yoshida, but the console war continues nonetheless. And the truth is that Sony is currently far ahead of Microsoft, having sold more than 40 million PS4s to date vs the less than 20 million Xbox Ones the Redmond company has sold since the console’s launch in 2013.
Congrats @Naughty_Dog and @yosp on another great Uncharted with #Uncharted4, amazing work.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) May 6, 2016
Although even if Microsoft executives like Spencer might feel a tinge of jealously due to the PS4’s smashing success, there are rumours that Microsoft is planning to counterattack pretty soon, by releasing an upgraded Xbox One that would even be more powerful than the new PS4K model that Sony has in the pipeline.
So things are likely about to heat up in the console wars, and perhaps we should see Spencer’s Twitter congratulatory message to Sony as the equivalent of a bear hug… But it is clear that the Japanese giant has the upper hand for the time being, with superb exclusives like Uncharted 4 and its upcoming PlayStation VR headset, which will be released this fall. But still, it remains to be seen whether Microsoft will be able to reverse the trend and turn things around in this console generation yet.