Maybe Just Delay Next-Gen Already

Photo: Christian Petersen (Getty Images)The Xbox Series X comes out in November, probably around the same time as the PS5 if Sony ever gets around to announcing its release date. But they don’t need to come out then. In fact, maybe it would be for the best if they were just delayed until some time next year.Lately I’ve been waking up every day in a weird mental vortex where time has no meaning. Memories of the past, aspirations for the future, and anxieties about the present violently collide with one another, all while I pour boiling water over coffee grounds and slice up strawberries for my always famished one-year-old in what feels like a never-ending loop. Nowhere in this psychological miasma are the words “PS5” or “Xbox Series X.” My default programming during these times tells me to “keep calm and carry on” but every time I remember that two of the biggest video game companies are in a months-long marketing duel to be the place where the most people play Call of Duty for the 16th year in a row, the programming crashes. 2020 feels like a whole lot of things, but the start of a new cycle of more powerful gaming hardware is not one of them.For starters, less than three months out, neither Microsoft nor Sony has really demonstrated why we should all be getting excited about shelling out something like two week’s worth of minimum wages for a new plastic brick to sit beside our TVs. Better load times? More detailed graphics? I have no doubt developers will use the new technology to create another round of really cool games, but what Microsoft and Sony have actually shown so far across their multiple press conferences and blog posts feels much more reminiscent of what we got with the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro. I see incremental improvements in the dozens of trailers both companies have shared, but nothing that feels striking or completely new. The Switch launch didn’t do that either, but it also had Breath of the Wild, and I still don’t see a Breath of the Wild.Microsoft didn’t dela
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