Challenger to Watch: PlayStation

Where most consumer technology fits a now rhythmic cycle of annual incrementalism, there is one tech category that undergoes a spasmodic shift that changes the face of the industry forever. In the multibillion-dollar world of gaming, every seven years or so, the sector undergoes a convulsion of epic scale as one generation of hardware comes to an end and another begins. It is at this point, a new era begins, and those generational winners crowned, and losers consigned to years of clawing back ground from behind, perhaps until they can release new hardware to catch up.

The generation that started in 2013, when Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One launched, will come to an end in Q4 2020 when both of these juggernauts release the consoles that each believes will represent the future of gaming for the next seven years. The biggest question? Which of these futures will gamers respond to and want to invest?

At the start of these generations, the brands are really just unveiling a promise. No-one knows what games will arrive in 2026, but both Sony and Microsoft want you to feel that their box will be the best thing to play it on.

And in no uncertain terms, challenger brands are the ones that typically do the best. In the console wars, it is very unusual for the winner of one generation to be the winner of the next.

The undisputed winner of this current generation has been Sony PlayStation. The PlayStation 4 has captured the hearts, minds and wallets of over 100m gamers across the world, making it one of the most successful consoles of all time (the PlayStation 2 sold more but over a longer lifetime).

Despite being the smaller player at the time of launch (the PlayStation 3 was considered a disaster in the industry), PlayStation was able to wrestle a lead away from Microsoft by offering a vision that felt true to gaming and put 'players' front and centre. It recognised and celebrated the emotional power that gamers know about, just at a time when its main competitor Microsoft seemed to forget it.

Microsoft's greatest error was in seeing the Xbox not as a gaming platform but as "the key to winning the living room". Gamers were immediately put off by a box that seemed to put expensive gimmicks and the ability to control your TV ahead of what they really wanted: a system that allowed them to feel extraordinary. Widely panned, the Xbox One has spent seven years in the doldrums. One cannot see Microsoft making the same mistake twice.

On top of that, the gaming market seems more fragmented than ever before. Google offers its "console-less" solution in the form of Stadia (though its launch has been underwhelming, to say the least). Nintendo's Switch has proved incredibly popular too, giving casual gamers who aren't as hung up on "the best experience" a cheaper platform to enjoy some brilliant gems. Even Apple has upped its game with the Apple Arcade all-you-can-eat subscription service on devices that many of us already own.

So the big question for PlayStation - now that it's the market leader, can it win from the front? Can it channel that challenger energy into a successful repeat of its greatest achievement, and make a case for why its vision of the future is the one that we should all buy into?