The top five games played on the PlayStation in 2025 by US players were exactly the same as in 2024, according to Circana's Player Engagement Tracker.
Minecraft's getting marginally cuter with its next update, as it continues to pretend it isn't designed for the express purpose of teaching innocent children that in order to survive, you've sometimes got to beat some pigs and trees to death with your bare hands. Baby farm animal mobs, long just mini-mes of their adult versions with slightly different head/body size ratios are getting their own unique appearances.
Time can be cruel. I'm not talking about the ravages of age when I say that - although, christ, the closer I creep to forty the creakier I become - but I'm thinking, I suppose, about legacy. The very nature of history, especially when it's oral in its delivery, is that it becomes truncated. Short-form takes over. For instance - think of a Prime Minister or President (back when we had normal ones of those, anyway), or the manager of a sports team, their tenure often ends up defined very broadly, no matter how much nuance there was at the time. Oftentimes, it's good or bad, with little in between. Which is a shame - because sometimes the nuance is where the most interesting thinking resides.
The Xbox business today is pretty unrecognizable from that of 20 years past, which on this week all that time ago was launching the Xbox 360. There's all the changes to the business, a different suite of executives at the top, and an entirely different first-party portfolio, of course - but when I think of the changes, one absence comes to the forefront of my mind: Japan.
When I look back on most consoles, I'm largely looking back at the games. The PS3 is LittleBigPlanet and Metal Gear 4, as far as I'm concerned, and even the GameCube, that squat, characterful delight, is largely hidden behind Mario Sunshine, Wind-Waker and Animal Crossing. (Even just typing that: cor, what a time that was.)
At the tail end of 2024 the original PlayStation turned 30 years old. While the Xbox 360 is only hitting 20 and it's not an industry shaker to the degree the PS1 was, there's no doubt it earned its place as one of the most important consoles of all time. Xbox managed to challenge Sony in the traditional home console space the PlayStation had dominated with PS1 and PS2, and the console's brilliant line-up of games played a major role in that.
I'll lay my age card on the table here: Uno on the Xbox 360 was the first time I used a webcam. Ever. It was also one of the first games I ever played, on my first ever console. As you can imagine, this combination of first times has given the game a spot quite close to my heart - it showed me how social and casual gaming fits into the world of video games… as well as a few other things I probably shouldn't have been seeing.
Yesterday, we published part one of our interview with former Xbox 360 boss Peter Moore, where he talked about the creation of Microsoft's beloved machine, the grand idea encompassing it, and how his team had to break from the stuffy office-worker image Microsoft had. "Guys with pocket protectors and thick glasses", as he described it. He also talked about "throwing punches" to provoke the Xbox vs. PlayStation console war.
Peter Moore is one executive who can probably claim to have done it all. Having recently fulfilled a lifelong dream of being CEO of Liverpool Football Club, this Liverpudlian businessman also spent decades working in video games, leading EA, helping Sega launch the Dreamcast and, of course, making a real contender of Microsoft's gaming business with the launch of Xbox 360. Whenever the Xbox 360 made a move, Moore was the person on stage announcing it, literally rolling up his sleeves to display Halo and Grand Theft Auto tattoos, taking the fight to Sony and PlayStation.
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