The Complete History Of Console Gaming Part 6: The 2020's

The Complete History of Console Gaming Part 6 - The Ninth Generation and Future

Welcome to MojoPlays, and welcome to the final part of our journey through gaming history. Over the previous few weeks we’ve been looking at the complete history of console gaming, and after our breakdown of the first 50 years, we’re ready to jump straight into the 2020s, with the ninth generation. No time to catch ya’ll up, so if you missed the other parts, make sure to check them out. Links in the description below! If I miss anything important, let me know in the comments.

2020: 9th Generation

The ninth generation is interesting, and let me tell you why. It didn’t reinvent gaming overnight, and although it refined it and sharpened it, it may well be the least noticeable leap in gaming technology that we’ve seen in a generation. Mostly because a lot of the innovations happened beneath the surface, rather than through things like graphics, and game power. Let’s take a look:

Sony and Microsoft launched almost simultaneously in late 2020 with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, alongside the smaller, cheaper, and disc-less Series S and PS5 Digital, and on paper, both machines looked like absolute monsters. Solid-state drives replaced traditional hard drives, slashing load times from minutes to seconds, while 4K resolution became the standard talking point, ray tracing entered the console vocabulary, and frame rates climbed toward 60fps and, in some cases, 120fps. Suddenly, gamers were arguing about frame pacing and refresh rates like they’d all secretly become PC technicians overnight.

But the biggest leap for this generation wasn’t graphics. It was speed. Fast travel became actually fast instead of giving you enough time to make a sandwich and rethink your career path, while open worlds loaded seamlessly in ways that genuinely felt futuristic. Games like “Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart” flexed near-instant dimension hopping to show off SSD power in a way that almost felt like black magic, well, orange and silver magic, proving that the hardware wasn’t just stronger anymore, it was smarter too.

Sony leaned heavily into immersion with the PS5’s DualSense controller, introducing advanced haptic feedback and adaptive triggers that made simple actions feel tactile in a way consoles had never really attempted before. Pulling a bowstring in “Horizon Forbidden West” or feeling resistance in a gun trigger wasn’t just visual anymore, and tiny details like walking through rain or crunching through snow could subtly vibrate through the controller itself. It was one of the first times in years that a controller genuinely felt new instead of just “the old one but shinier.” At the same time, Sony doubled down on cinematic exclusives, with games like “Demon’s Souls,” “Returnal,” “Spider-Man 2,” “God of War Ragnarök,” and “Final Fantasy XVI” reinforcing PlayStation’s blockbuster identity. Showing that if Sony has a type, it’s emotionally exhausted people fighting giant things while looking unbelievably expensive.

Microsoft, meanwhile, played a completely different game. Instead of focusing solely on exclusives, Xbox Game Pass became the headline feature, functioning as a Netflix-style subscription service that offered hundreds of games, including day-one first-party releases like “Halo Infinite,” “Forza Motorsport,” and “Starfield.” Backward compatibility also became a major strength because not only did your old library come along for the ride, it often ran better too, with smoother frame rates and faster load times breathing new life into older titles. Microsoft wasn’t just selling a box anymore. It was selling access, convenience, and the terrifying realization that nobody on Earth has enough free time to play the 400 games sitting untouched in their subscription library.

And then there’s Nintendo, who continues to operate like the one kid in the group project who ignores the assignment entirely and somehow still gets full marks anyway. The Switch technically launched in 2017, but it comfortably straddled generations, and by the time the PS5 and Series X arrived, Nintendo’s little hybrid machine was still thriving. Not because it competed on raw power, because it absolutely did not, but because it nailed flexibility. Dock it to your TV, undock it for handheld, and play wherever you want. Games like “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom,” “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” and “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” proved once again that raw specs aren’t everything, with Nintendo reminding the entire industry that art style, creativity, and gameplay innovation matter far more than counting individual pores on a character model.

But there was something much darker that the ninth generation has also been defined by: Something unexpected, and something we really hadn’t seen to this degree before... supply shortages. Global chip constraints came from a perfect storm of issues that individually probably would have been manageable, but together became complete chaos. You had a global pandemic massively increasing demand while simultaneously reducing production capabilities, the infamous Suez Canal blockage disrupting international shipping, and then scalpers swooping in like comic book villains to buy consoles in aggressive bulk so they could resell them online for the price of a small family car. For years, simply finding a PS5 in stock felt harder than beating “Sekiro” blindfolded.

The restriction on product made consoles difficult to find for over three years and, although demand was enormous, availability simply wasn’t there. Gamers started searching elsewhere for entertainment, leading to changes in consumer habits that are still being felt today, and when you combine this with what I’ve considered the least dramatic generational leap in gaming history, you’ve got a perfect recipe for grumpy gamers online. Many major titles launched on PS4 and Xbox One alongside PS5 and Series X, slowing the feeling of a clean generational break, so instead of feeling like a bold new era, it often felt more like the old era wearing slightly nicer shoes. Meanwhile, cloud gaming quietly continued evolving in the background through services like Xbox Cloud Gaming and NVIDIA GeForce Now, hinting at a future where hardware itself may matter less and less over time.

At the same time, development costs absolutely exploded. Blockbuster games now rival Hollywood productions in both budget and scale, with some AAA games reportedly costing hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, which honestly explains why executives begin sweating violently whenever somebody asks if a single-player game can be made in under eight years. Live-service models expanded aggressively too, with battle passes, seasonal updates, rotating stores, and constant engagement becoming industry buzzwords that players either embraced or became deeply exhausted by. Meanwhile, free-to-play giants like “Fortnite,” “Call of Duty: Warzone,” “Roblox,” and “Genshin Impact” remained cross-generational juggernauts that basically consumed entire friend groups whole.

Platform exclusivity also started mattering less in multiplayer spaces as cross-play became increasingly standard and the walls between ecosystems slowly weakened. Then, by 2025, Xbox heavily signaled that they no longer viewed strict console exclusivity as essential moving forward, which pushed the entire industry into a very different era for console gaming.

The whole way gaming, and the gaming industry operated, seemed to change at a fundamental level. But with the lack of clearly defined leaps in visuals or gameplay in the eyes of many consumers, what actually defines the ninth generation? The answer is speed and subscriptions.

The console war isn’t just about exclusives or hardware specs anymore because now it revolves around services, libraries, flexibility, convenience, ecosystems, and where your digital purchases live. And if there’s one thing this generation has proven, it’s that raw power alone doesn’t guarantee victory anymore. Value does.

Are we in the 10th gen?

Nintendo doesn’t usually follow trends. It waits, and then it pivots. The Switch 2 represents Nintendo refining one of its smartest ideas ever: hybrid gaming. The original Switch proved that players love flexibility, whether that meant playing docked on the TV or undocked in your hands, essentially giving players one system for two completely different lifestyles. The sequel isn’t really about reinventing that formula either. It’s about upgrading it with stronger hardware capable of visuals closer to PlayStation 4-level performance, smoother frame rates, and much stronger third-party support.

Faster internal storage dramatically cuts load times, while developers who previously skipped Nintendo hardware due to technical limitations may now reconsider, which is huge for Nintendo and honestly huge for gamers getting a little tired of the endless Sony-versus-Xbox boxing match. The Switch 2 keeps the hybrid magic while fixing performance bottlenecks and, most importantly, it doesn’t need to directly compete with the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X. Nintendo figured out years ago that trying to win the hardware arms race against Sony and Microsoft is like trying to fistfight a tank, so instead they carved out their own lane entirely, and somehow, it keeps working.

The New War

We are finally up to date, as best I could manage, but before wrapping up this journey through gaming history, there’s one recent challenger entering the arena that could seriously affect the future of console gaming, and I’d like to dedicate a minute to discussing it. Ladies and gentlemen: The Steam Machine.

I’ve avoided talking about it until now for this dramatic final boss reveal, but Steam Machines have technically existed since 2012 when Valve first announced the concept. Unfortunately, high prices, confusing hardware tiers, weak Linux compatibility, and unclear messaging hurt the idea badly, so rather than disrupting Sony and Microsoft, the original Steam Machines fizzled out by 2018 with the quiet sadness of a cancelled TV show nobody finished. Still, the core idea survived and eventually paved the way for devices like the Steam Deck, which proved there was absolutely massive interest in PC-console hybrids.

That success has now created serious buzz around newer Steam Machine concepts discussed for 2025 and beyond because, unlike traditional consoles locked to specific storefronts, Valve’s ecosystem potentially gives players access to a gigantic PC gaming library on a TV with controller-friendly support and cross-platform flexibility. That threatens the traditional divide between PC and console gaming in a way we really haven’t seen before, and if Valve aggressively prices future hardware while continuing to support open ecosystems, multiple storefronts, mods, and apps, it could pressure Sony and Xbox into making massive changes themselves.

And honestly? That’s exciting. Because whether it’s cloud gaming, subscriptions, hybrid devices, handheld PCs, or streaming libraries, the future of gaming suddenly feels unpredictable again, and we’re potentially heading into one of the biggest industry shakeups since the crash caused by “E.T.” back in the early 1980s. The battlefield is changing, the rules are changing, and for the first time in a while, it genuinely feels like nobody fully knows what the next generation of gaming is actually going to look like.

Personally? I can’t wait to see the chaos unfold.