New consoles used to be a big deal. Generational leaps still are, but we’ve fallen into a malaise in recent years as new models and more powerful advancements come along and we all shrug our shoulders before getting on with our day. Sony and Microsoft previously hosted major events and livestreams to showcase console revisions, but now we’d be lucky to get a tweet teasing the damn things before they’re unleashed into the world.

Speaking of, the PS5 Slim was announced earlier this week. I woulstatic.aayyy.com/topic/dn/’t be surprised if you’d missed it, given the reveal first surfaced in a tweet before a brief explainer was thrown up on the PlayStation Blog with specs, dimensions, and pricing for each region. The machine will be 30 percent smaller and have a detachable disk drive for ease of use and space. You’ll be able to upgrade your internal storage much easier too, but aside from that, it’s a surprisingly conservative revision for a console that has been on the market close to three years now. Sony hasn’t made a big deal out of it, for better and for worse.

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But how can it treat a console revision for an existing piece of hardware with hardly any big exclusives as a big deal? I’m not sure if it can without ridicule or putting a blatant target on its back. Spider-Man 2 is the only major exclusive left to break cover this year, and this will be receiving a limited edition console bundle making use of the old design, with this new one hitting the market just in time for the Christmas season. Given how garishly large and white the original model is, it’s been a long time coming, but you’d think we’d be talking about it.

The thing is, we don’t have a reason to. Launching in the midst of the pandemic, the PS5 fell out of the starting gate with diabolically low stock levels and a distinct lack of games actually worth playing. Astro’s Playroom is a masterpiece and Demon’s Souls is a brilliant remake, but other early bangers like Returnal and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart have already come to PC, while games such as Horizon Forbidden West, Miles Morales, and God of War Ragnarok have been playable on PS4 since launch. That leaves Final Fantasy 16 and the upcoming Rebirth, both of which are destined to get PC versions at some point, too.

PS5 is the flagship console on the market right now, but that means something different in 2023 than it did in 2014. All games which tend to penetrate the mainstream are either live service, annual instalments, or the sort of blockbusters which now take half a decade to make. This isn’t the sort of timeline suited to selling millions of consoles, especially new, more powerful revisions when those who purchased the original still don’t feel like they’ve gotten their money’s worth given the lack of exclusive games that were once a normality. Video games are changing, and we’re starting to see hardware giants respond to that evolution.

As we begin to embrace cloud technology and digital purchases, the role of games consoles outfitted with specs that can’t be customised grows increasingly irrelevant, even to mainstream audiences thanks to the continued presence of live service games and effort required to make triple-A behemoths. As a result, Sony has kept a new model quiet, or at least hopes to slip it into the regular rotation without too many people kicking up a fuss. It confirmed in the blog post that this will become the default PS5 model as inventory of the previous one sells out, meaning there is little reason to upgrade if you were an early adopter or fear you might be missing out.

So, this isn’t the next step for PS5 or an evolution for the platform, it’s a brief changing of the guard before the status quo is restored. Sony doesn’t expect us, nor does it really want us to get excited about the PS5 Slim, because it only exists because it looks better, is presumably cheaper to make, and we’ve reached the natural point during a generation where significant console revisions start to be entertained. This isn’t the PS4 Pro or Xbox One X, and who knows if we’ll even get equivalent consoles this time around when the landscape is so different.

Fewer games, new technology, and a different attitude towards the industry means that Sony and Microsoft are no longer in a bitter battle of teraflops and resolutions. Both are trying to figure out where things are going to fall, and all we can do is go along the ride with them. But hey, at least the PS5 Slim has a fancy new stand we have to pay extra for.

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