Opinion: Why the Current Generation of Consoles Is the Worst in History

In 1983, the console video game market suffered the most catastrophic collapse in its history — revenue fell nearly 97%, from $3.2 billion to $100 million a year. Dozens of companies closed, thousands of people were laid off, and millions of unsold cartridges ended up in landfills (the most famous one near the city of Alamogordo, where over 700,000 cartridges were secretly buried).

One of the fastest-growing and most promising industries in entertainment had unexpectedly found itself not just teetering on the edge of an abyss, but plummeting into it at breakneck speed. Journalists and analysts who had previously sung the praises of Atari and the rest ("The very idea that this market [video games — ed.] could run out of steam is absurd," Business Week declared in 1982) were now claiming that consoles had no future in the United States. Then, in 1986, like a yokai leaping out of a bento box, Nintendo landed on the American market — cleared of competitors — and within three years had grown it back to the pre-crisis level of $3 billion.

It is widely accepted that the modern gaming industry begins with Nintendo's arrival in the US, and consoles have always played an important — often pivotal — role in it. Platform holders have been the largest and most important companies in the industry for 40 years, capturing between a third and half of all profits. Even if you've never once launched a PlayStation, Xbox, or Sega (hard to believe) — you are intimately familiar with the consequences of their influence: the fashion for cover shooters and cinematic QTE sequences, digital stores, voice chat and matchmaking, the "70 dollars for AAA" standard, and advertising campaigns on the scale of Hollywood blockbusters.

All the more startling, then, to discover that after decades of dominance, record budgets, multi-million sales, and countless iconic franchises, we find ourselves face to face with the worst console generation in history. Platform holders no longer look like the undisputed leaders of the industry and trendsetters. Behind every exclusive flop, every studio closure, every frantic strategy pivot, the signs of a deep systemic crisis grow ever clearer — one that, without urgent surgical intervention, could very well replicate the apocalypse of 1983.

In this article, I will try to explain how it came to this and why the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series generation is the worst in history. And yes, Nintendo gets off lightest here: not only because its consoles are phenomenally successful commercially, but because the Big N has managed to form a separate ecosystem that exists largely in parallel with the rest of the video game industry and is less exposed to global trends and crises. But even Nintendo's console business raises serious questions for me.

So, the modern console market has three platform holders: Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. In 2025, their combined revenue totaled $45.3 billion, the audience was estimated at 645 million people, and console sales exceeded 40 million units. The Japanese giants lead the pack. In March 2026, Sony reported that the previous fiscal year was one of the most successful in the history of its gaming division: revenue reached $29.4 billion, with operating profit of around $2.9 billion. PlayStation 5 sales hit 93.7 million units, only slightly behind the pace of the PlayStation 4 at a comparable point in its lifecycle. Nintendo's revenue in the past fiscal year nearly doubled year-on-year to $7.3 billion, and net profit grew to $2.7 billion. Nintendo Switch 2 is, naturally, flying off shelves: 19.86 million units were sold in the first 9 months, plus 3.8 million units of the original Switch.

As in any fairy tale with three brothers, there is one falling behind — Microsoft. Xbox Series X/S sales are so embarrassing that the last semi-official figure dates back to 2023 — 21 million units. Today, even the most optimistic estimates put total sales at no more than 35 million units. The number of Game Pass subscribers has barely grown in recent years, and the service's economic viability remains a serious question. But the "third brother" may be the fool, yet what a prospect: behind Xbox stands one of the largest corporations on the planet. Microsoft's revenue exceeds the entire gaming industry's output: $281.7 billion versus $188.8 billion.

Moreover, after acquiring Bethesda and Activision Blizzard, Xbox has an ultimate portfolio of studios and franchises: Call of Duty, Minecraft, Halo, The Elder Scrolls, Diablo, Warcraft, Doom. To finally realize this potential, Microsoft changed the leadership of its gaming division. Following Phil Spencer's departure, Asha Sharma became head of Microsoft Gaming — and at the very least she is saying the right things. But even if she doesn't succeed, the history of the console market shows that the failure of the third brother poses no threat to the general wellbeing.

But all of this is mere surface-level prosperity and promise. The reality is that we are currently living through the worst console generation in history, because…

Consoles are defined by their exclusives — whether timed, console-exclusive, or from third-party studios. PlayStation 2 is Metal Gear Solid 2/3, Shadow of the Colossus, God of War, and GTA: San Andreas. Xbox 360 is Halo 3, Gears of War, and Oblivion. SNES is Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, and Donkey Kong Country. Even the recurring narrative about the underrated Dreamcast rests on Shenmue, Jet Set Radio, and others.

Exclusives have always held a special place, because they are not merely hits with tens of millions in sales. They reshaped the landscape of the industry (like Final Fantasy 7 — the first gaming blockbuster), defined entire genres (like Symphony of the Night with the Metroidvania), set gameplay standards for years to come (like Gears of War with the third-person cover shooter), and so on.

Platform holders have always needed games of this scale and significance — system sellers: projects for which you are willing to spend a disproportionate amount of money on a device that does nothing but play games. Even now, when most of Sony's and Xbox's profits come from multiplatform releases and live-service games, exclusives remain the primary reason for buying a console. Because exclusives are the unique selling proposition. They define what distinguishes a specific platform from its competitors, shape the brand's image, and shape our gaming experience.

The absence of meaningful exclusives is most commonly cited as the main problem of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series generation. And it is hard to argue with that: just compare the libraries of current consoles with those of their successful predecessors (more on that shortly). However, it is important to understand that the issue is not a loss of absolute exclusivity or games releasing on PC — and in Xbox's case, on rival consoles as well. Simultaneous release on PC didn't stop Oblivion from becoming a symbol of the Xbox 360, and the original Resident Evil came to Sega Saturn a year later but is still firmly associated with the original PlayStation. Many experts believe that multiplatform releases and timed exclusivity do not materially affect sales or significantly harm a console's brand. The problem with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series exclusives is that there are no true system sellers among them.

In Microsoft's kingdom, things are particularly bleak. Halo Infinite was supposed to restore glory to the brand's flagship series, but quickly drowned in content and support issues. Starfield — "Skyrim in space," the great new RPG from Bethesda — turned into a reputational disaster. Its current concurrent player count on Steam is five times lower than Skyrim: Special Edition's — 25,000 versus 5,000, according to SteamDB. South of Midnight, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2, Avowed, and The Outer Worlds 2 are all too niche, and Microsoft couldn't even be bothered to market them properly. Well, you might have gotten Game Pass for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Oh wait — it's on PlayStation 5 now.

The situation with timed exclusives from third-party studios is no better: nothing there comes close to Gears of War or Oblivion. Surely you're not buying an Xbox for The Medium, Scorn, High on Life, or Darktide? What's more, Microsoft has been so poor at developing and promoting its own projects that in the last 10 years, only two of its games without "Call of Duty" in the title have crossed the grandmaster threshold of 10 million copies — Forza Horizon 4 and Forza Horizon 5. A third will probably join them — Forza Horizon 6 — and we should be grateful for that.

PlayStation 5 is in better shape. Its exclusives don't release on rival consoles, are typically beloved by critics, decorated with awards, and financially successful (though not all of them — Death Stranding 2, for instance, has sold fewer than 2 million copies). There are even third-party timed exclusive hits — Stellar Blade, Black Myth: Wukong, and Baldur's Gate 3 (in the case of the latter two, the exclusivity was most likely due to the weaker hardware of the lower-end Xbox Series S).

But how many truly significant exclusives has PlayStation 5 produced in its six years of existence? Not just reasonably high-quality and successful ones, but generation-defining games that reshape the industry's landscape and feel like important cultural events. Games that at the very least would have the entire internet talking for a couple of days post-launch, outside the context of tired memes about "agendas." Well… two and a half: God of War Ragnarök, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and half a point for Astro Bot — exclusively thanks to its win at TGA. And even those are merely part of an assembly line churning out sequels to PlayStation 4 games: Horizon Forbidden West, Gran Turismo 7, Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Yotei, Saros.

Sony's exclusives are no longer about experimentation, creative risks, or setting new standards. They are about repeating the same safe formula: more spectacle, better visuals, minimal gameplay changes, and total casualization of the experience. "More, prettier, simpler" — that's Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Yotei, and even the recent Saros.

Sony's sequels are enough to justify the existence of a follow-up, but not enough to give the PlayStation 5 generation its own identity. And that is a devastating failure compared to the PlayStation 4's lineup, which is still at the center of attention and debate. Years have passed, yet we are still comparing every linear action game to Uncharted 4, still waiting for Bloodborne on PC, still debating who's better — God of War or Red Dead Redemption 2, still arguing about The Last of Us Part 2's story. Even Days Gone, acknowledged by the publisher as a flop, has acquired cult status over the years. On PlayStation 5, even a new game from Hideo Kojima got lost in the noise. The numbers reflect this: over the past six years, sales of Sony's exclusives have fallen by nearly half.

Against the competition, Nintendo remains a bastion of ideal exclusivity. It is hard to accuse them of a lack of successful, unique, and industry-significant games: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Super Mario Odyssey, and so on. These are real system sellers, generating the lion's share of the Big N's revenues — around 40%.

But there is a catch. All of the games listed above belong to the original Switch — formally a console of the previous generation. It is its library, its reputation, and the audience accumulated over eight years that drove Switch 2's explosive launch. The new console's own exclusive lineup, however, is not so rosy: Donkey Kong Bananza, Pokémon Pokopia, Mario Kart World, and a few more niche releases like Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. For the launch of a new Nintendo console — that's slim pickings. The Big N hasn't merely failed to release a project on the level of Super Mario Odyssey or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — they haven't even announced one.

Instead, Nintendo is largely selling enhanced versions of games from the original Switch — capitalizing on the previous generation rather than defining a new one. Meanwhile it hopes to satisfy players' hunger with third-party blockbusters, both current ones like Pragmata and Resident Evil Requiem, and last-gen ones: Cyberpunk 2077 and Hogwarts Legacy.

So the voices saying there are no games on Nintendo's console, too, are growing louder. There is, however, an even more troubling prospect: the very fact that Switch 2 exists may signal that the Big N has problems with identity and long-term strategy. But more on that in the next chapter.

Pause for a moment and look around. Are you reading this text on a phone, a laptop, or a monitor? You probably have a TV at home — maybe more than one. Next to it sits a PlayStation or a Switch, or perhaps a cable runs to a full gaming PC. Somewhere there's a forgotten tablet, or proudly displayed, a Steam Deck. And less than six months ago, Microsoft was desperately trying to convince you that all of that is Xbox. It would be hard to imagine a more absurd — and simultaneously more revealing — brand campaign from a company that has completely lost its sense of identity.

Identity matters enormously to consoles. When rumors emerged that Sony was stepping back from releasing exclusives on PC, there was broad consensus that the key reason wasn't that the ports generate little revenue or negatively affect console sales. Sony fears something else — that the PlayStation brand will lose its identity, its unique image. Because when choosing a gaming device, we look at more than price, teraflops, and controller comfort. We also buy into an image — what ideas and values a platform embodies, how the community relates to it, what it stands for — and how all of that aligns with our own values, outlook, and lifestyle.

A console's identity is shaped not only by its library, but also by the design of the device, its advertising, public statements, and the platform holder's market decisions. A responsible parent will choose a Switch for their child not because of its hybrid nature, OLED screen, or subscription with NES and SNES classics, but because its look and UI signal: this is a toy for children.

Similarly, the famous surrealist advertising campaigns of the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 era never mentioned processor power, video memory, or even the games available on the consoles. They sold PlayStation as a ticket into a forbidden, digital, stylish, and provocative world where video games were no longer a children's pastime but part of pop culture.

Thanks to its unique identity, a console can become more than a device — it can become part of its audience's self-definition, a piece of their lifestyle. This emotional engagement explains why so many gamers build their identities around platforms — becoming "Sony boys," "Billy boys," or "Mario boys." For a platform holder, that is the highest level of success, because fans are not only willing to pay more than others (on average 25% more, according to research), but also advertise and promote the brand for free.

Every successful console had a unique identity: it was associated with a particular image, gaming experience, and audience. Xbox 360 meant online play, competitive excitement, and console shooters. Sega Genesis/Mega Drive meant teenage rebellion, speed, and bold entertainment in contrast to the more "family-friendly" Nintendo. Wii meant party games, fun, and accessibility.

But the current Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 generation has an identity problem even worse than its exclusives problem. Microsoft has spent more than 10 years unable to decide what Xbox actually is. A console? A subscription? A digital PC storefront? A cloud service? A logo on a box of PlayStation games?

PlayStation 5 is a completely faceless device with a divisive design that evokes no association with entertainment or fun. Its entire marketing revolves around repeating the same mantra: remember those great games on PlayStation 4? Well, now we've got their sequels, and an updated version of The Last of Us.

Do you even remember that the entire launch marketing of the PlayStation 5 was built around two features — a fast SSD and the DualSense controller? The former was supposed to enable games with instantaneous travel between worlds. A dedicated exclusive — Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart — was even released to demonstrate the technology. The DualSense was positioned as a unique immersion tool: its advanced haptic feedback and adaptive triggers let you feel the patter of raindrops, the tension of a bowstring, the resistance of a trigger, a weapon's recoil, and even the difference between surfaces under a character's feet. In the end, the games that fully utilized these technologies can be counted on one hand. They became neither a selling feature nor the foundation of a new gaming experience, and Sony never even tried to build an identity for its new console around them.

Nintendo once again stands apart. The Switch has a clear identity built on family values, nostalgia, accessibility, and the very idea of playing anywhere with anyone. The console can be criticized for weak hardware, inflated prices, and technical backwardness — but it cannot be mistaken for anything else. Buyers know exactly what experience they are being sold and why they need a Nintendo console specifically.

Yet the Big N, in releasing the Switch 2, seems to have betrayed an important part of its own identity (apologies for repeating that word for the tenth time — ed.). Nintendo has been in the console market for more than 40 years, and the company's history proves: its success came not from never making mistakes (cartridges on the Nintendo 64, or the bet on the Wii U, say otherwise), but from always adhering to the same principles. One of the most important: always offer something new, bet on innovation. As a result, every console felt like a step forward, something unique — the Nintendo 64 was the first console with an analog stick, the Wii popularized motion controls, the Wii U put a screen inside the controller, the Switch introduced the hybrid concept, and so on.

The Switch 2, however, is simply an improved Pro version that retained not only the name and design, but also the original's core innovation — the combination of portable and home gaming. More inches, more teraflops, more gigabytes — all well and good, but we are talking about a company that has proven hardware power does not directly translate into sales volume.

And here Nintendo is, unfortunately, echoing Sony and Microsoft almost word for word. The entire current console generation has been gripped by a crisis of fresh ideas: fear of innovation, self-repetition, and an eternal bet on "the same thing, but more powerful." That is precisely why this generation feels so featureless. In the past, the release of a new console was an event — it promised new games, technologies, genres, possibilities, images, and more. Today it is simply a more powerful device with slightly faster loading times, a slightly sharper picture — and, accordingly, a higher price tag.

Yet the absence of identity is not the worst of it.

The gaming industry in 2026 is struggling: prices are soaring, players are getting poorer, projects are being cancelled, studios are closing, mass layoffs have become routine, AI slop seems to lurk around every corner, and any gaming discussion inevitably devolves into culture wars. The global political and economic instability only pours more fuel on the fire.

One might hope for industry leaders who could calm the market and meet their loyal audience halfway — in short, show everyone how to act effectively and responsibly amid this chaos.

Well, that is decidedly not what the protagonists of this article are doing. Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft have become, over recent years, the symbol of everything worst in the industry — three horsemen of the gaming apocalypse. And two of them are headless.

Nintendo, for its part, is efficient, releases good games, and keeps its fans happy. It is simply a greedy, soulless corporation determined to squeeze every last dollar out of you.

This horseman's mission is to demonstrate to all the others just how much money can be shaken out of a loyal audience. Release a buggy, unplayable-at-launch Pokémon Scarlet & Violet? Naturally — those pocket monster fans will buy 20 million copies regardless. Sell the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour tech demo for $20? Yes, a thousand times yes. Want to upgrade your already-purchased The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to the Switch 2 version? That'll be another $10. While other publishers — even Take-Two — are hemming and hawing and only hinting at "possible" price increases, Nintendo declared it plainly: $80. And added: it can be $90, $100 — whatever we want.

And my personal favorite: the Big N's crusade against physical copies. You see, the poor little indie company simply doesn't like spending money on printing cartridges, packaging, shipping to stores, and all the rest. And then you'll play the game, trade it in, or sell it — another shortfall in the books. So Nintendo started selling boxes without cartridges, just a download code. You've got something to put on the shelf — be grateful. And then went one step further and made physical copies more expensive than digital ones. Be thankful they're not renting you the cartridges.

Now — to the two headless horsemen. Of course, studios closed before this generation too. Enormous financial disasters happened, major companies in the industry went bankrupt due to management errors. But what Sony and Microsoft have pulled off this generation is an absolute bingo of stupidity, arrogance, greed, and irresponsibility.

How about buying Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion and then, a year later, laying off 1,900 people to cut costs — and accompanying the announcement with a letter containing the line "Xbox has never been stronger." Or how about this: effusively praising Hi-Fi Rush, calling it a "huge success" and a game that embodies the DNA of Xbox — and then, a few months later, closing Tango Gameworks, the studio that made it? Other victims of Microsoft's efficient management over recent years include Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Games, Roundhouse, The Initiative, and more. The last one was opened with great fanfare in 2018 and closed seven years later, having never shipped a single game.

Sony has also been aggressively collecting scalps: PixelOpus, London Studio, Firewalk Studios, Neon Koi, Bluepoint Games, Dark Outlaw Games, and others. But even the survivors suffered — layoffs affected at least 1,660 people, including, for example, 320 employees at Bungie, acquired in 2022 for $3.6 billion.

And why is a gaming giant generating tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue forced to close studios, lay off employees, and slash costs? For the same reason that between 2013 and 2020, Naughty Dog successively released The Last of Us, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, and The Last of Us Part 2 (not counting two DLCs and a remaster) — and then, over the following six years, produced zero new games. Just a remake of the first The Last of Us and a remaster of the second.

You see, Sony's leadership under Jim Ryan decided that the future of PlayStation was in live-service games. To execute this foolproof plan, Sony bought Bungie, opened a couple of new studios, and tasked all the others with making live services too: Naughty Dog, Bend Studio, Santa Monica, Guerrilla Games, and more. The brilliant executives of the Japanese corporation overlooked just two small things — the market is saturated with live-service games, and the majority of Sony's studios had never worked on online projects. At one point Ryan boasted that 10–12 multiplayer projects were in development inside the company.

In the end, Concord — which cost $300 million — flopped, Marathon underperformed, the rest were cancelled, some studios were closed, and among those still showing signs of life there remain Fairgame$ (which, according to insider reports, has enormous problems) and Horizon Hunters Gathering. As they say — we'll see.

The worst part for Sony isn't even the money thrown down the drain, but the time talented developers wasted, and the blow to the platform's reputation. Sony, with its own hands, deprived itself of quality exclusives from Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, and Bluepoint, enraged its fanbase, and blurred the identity of PlayStation as a platform for expensive, polished, auteur single-player blockbusters.

At least Sony had a strategy and stuck to it. Microsoft, meanwhile, has spent more than 10 years looking like someone trying to assemble a plane mid-flight. In the early 2010s, the company bet on multimedia. The Xbox One was positioned as an entertainment hub, not a gaming console. The result: dismal sales and defeat in the console race against the PlayStation 4.

Then came the bet on Game Pass as the "Netflix of gaming." The company actively acquired mid-size and smaller studios — Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Double Fine Productions — promising them creative freedom and players a vast variety of content. And then came the Activision Blizzard deal, and the strategy instantly pivoted toward maximally aggressive monetization of the most profitable and mass-market franchises: Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and other live-service projects. Everything else was put under the knife of optimization and cost-cutting.

Despite all the mistakes and failures, the current problems could be written off as a temporary slump, an unlucky cycle, the fallout from the pandemic, rising development costs, and audience fatigue. The thinking might go: new games will come, hardware will get cheaper, exclusives will arrive, and the market will return to normal. But too many signs point to the fact that consoles are missing something far more important — a future.

The gaming industry has changed too much over the past decade: the growth of the indie segment, the rising importance of PC and mobile gaming, shifting player habits and priorities, expanding audiences thanks to new generations of players and the rapidly growing markets of Asia. Add to this global economic, political, and technological shifts: rising hardware costs, declining purchasing power, the spread of radical sentiments, and more. In this new landscape of the gaming industry, consoles appear destined for a far from leading role — more like a niche, expensive device, a stronghold of eternal nostalgia for better days. Four factors drive this bleak conclusion.

The console market's share of total gaming industry revenue has been declining since the early part of the previous decade. In 2019, consoles accounted for around 30% of revenue; by 2025, that share had fallen to 24%. Newzoo projects that by 2028, the PC segment will overtake the console market in revenue. Even more telling is the audience comparison: consoles at 645 million, PC at 936 million, and mobile games at around 3 billion players.

Meanwhile, more and more major publishers are prioritizing PC and not even considering console exclusivity. Square Enix, for instance, admitted that the timed PlayStation 5 exclusivity of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth cost the company tens of millions of dollars. And that is a particularly striking example, because we are talking about a franchise long directly associated with Sony's consoles. PC is no longer a backup platform or a place for a belated port — it is a priority market with a massive audience, long-tail sales, digital distribution, discounts, streamers, mods, and far less dependence on hardware upgrade cycles.

Consoles are losing ground to other platforms not only in active player numbers but also in growth rate. Projections put the console audience at 688 million by 2028, while PC will exceed 1 billion.

But the core problem isn't quantity — it's the age of that audience. Exact figures are elusive, but analysts broadly agree that consoles grow less appealing to younger audiences each year. This is linked both to rising hardware and game prices and to gaming habits and consumer behavior. Generations Z and Alpha favor PC and mobile phones as more democratic and open platforms, prefer free-to-play online titles, are more oriented toward social interaction, and care less about graphics.

Meanwhile, the console audience is ageing and becoming more conservative — and it will gradually shrink simply through natural attrition. Theoretically, a focus on older demographics could help. In the US, the 40+ gamer segment generated $19 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow to $43 billion by 2030. Yet platform holders seem blind to the ageing of their own audience and by inertia continue chasing younger generations.

The console market has historically been oriented toward the US, Europe, and Japan — regions with high purchasing power, developed retail infrastructure, a tradition of buying premium games, and a long-established culture of home consoles. The problem is that platform holders have hit a ceiling here. Nearly everyone who wanted and could afford a console is already within the PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo ecosystem.

At the same time, the most promising and fastest-growing gaming markets — China, India, Southeast Asia — are built on entirely different models: PC, mobile gaming, free-to-play, online services, and esports. The future of the gaming industry belongs to consumers from those countries, and that only deepens the consoles' problems. The faster new markets grow, the further the audience will tilt toward PC and mobile games.

The hardware crisis and global economic instability are affecting the entire gaming industry, but the console market is hit hardest. According to the analytics firm Circana, the console audience in the US has shifted in recent years toward households earning more than $100,000 (nearly $20,000 above the median).

Consoles are gradually transforming from a mass-market device into a purchase accessible only to the most affluent consumers. The PS5 Pro, for instance, rose by $200 over a year and a half and now retails at $899.99. Even Nintendo can no longer boast affordable consoles: Switch 2 will go up to $499.99 from September 2026. Meanwhile, game prices — especially in the AAA segment — are projected to rise significantly over the coming years.

In these conditions, more and more gamers will turn to PC and mobile devices, which — beyond gaming — cover many other needs: work, study, communication, streaming, social media, creativity, and content consumption. The console audience, meanwhile, will continue to contract.

Consoles, of course, are not going anywhere. But their golden age seems to have come to an end. They no longer define the future of video games — they are merely trying to hold on in a turbulent and rapidly shifting digital entertainment market. Too many mistakes have been made, and the world, the players, and the industry itself have changed too much. Whether platform holders can reinvent themselves, only time will tell. But if this current console generation is the worst in history — what will the next one look like?