This week we’ve had news from the two big video game companies that aren’t Nintendo about their plans for the new generation. Sony intends to bring out PlayStation 6 with components whose memory alone would already come to more than $700. Xbox, meanwhile, is talking about between $1,400 and $1,800 for Xbox Helix. And while in both cases we’re talking before subsidies, Sony has already said it doesn’t plan to do that and although Xbox still hasn’t said anything about it, technically it’s not legal to sell products below their cost price. Even if it happens anyway.
This leaves us in an uncomfortable situation. Do consoles at these prices make sense? It doesn’t even feel like we’ve gotten the most out of the current generation of consoles. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S have barely been pushed to their limits and, if what GTA6 shows is real, we’ve barely started to scratch the surface of what they’re capable of. What’s the point of jumping generations? That companies need to sell new hardware. But what if the solution weren’t in the future, but in the past?
Looking to the past to see the future
The solution to Sony and Xbox’s problems came this year from Plaion through its partnership with SNK when it announced the Neo Geo AES+. The one that was once the Rolls-Royce of home consoles was announced for launch on November 12, 2026 with a simple premise: being able to play all Neo Geo video games on physical media as if it were the summer of 1990. A dream come true for any retro lover, or for anyone who didn’t have $649.99 to spare in August 1990, when the original console came out.
This announcement was received with skepticism. A lot of people thought that, although it could succeed, it wouldn’t make a splash. The audience for retro games is limited and although the console is cheap, €200, and the games even more so, €69.99 in physical format in reproductions identical to the originals (where second-hand they all cost several hundred, if not thousands), it didn’t seem like that kind of audience existed. Except it did. So much so that Plaion has had to change its plans.
Although the console was going to come out this coming November 12, the console has had to be delayed until September 16, 2027. The reason? Demand has been so high that they can’t come close to meeting it. That’s why they’ve decided to delay its launch by almost a full year so they can meet demand.
Not only that. On top of that, Plaion and SNK have decided to produce new games for the Neo Geo. Functional on both the old consoles and the new ones, they’re developing new versions of old games for a 26-year-old console. That’s the level of success the Neo Geo AES+ has reached. One where it starts to make sense to consider programming from scratch a game exclusively for Neo Geo AES+ or, at least, also for the platform. And there’s our idea. Why bring out a new console when you can bring out an old one?
PlayStation 2 is still the best-selling console in history for a reason
Sony and Xbox have one possibility: not bring out their new consoles and reissue the old ones. They have perfectly functional consoles they could sell again, as Plaion has done with SNK. And make plans that revolve around that.
Sony is the one that would have the easiest time. PlayStation 2 is the best-selling console in history, but the first PlayStation and PlayStation 3 are easy to reissue too. People feel enormous nostalgia for these consoles and, particularly the first two, there’s room to add features that make them more attractive. Adapters for DualSense, integration with PSN, Bluetooth. This without even counting the number of games they’d have to reissue on these consoles, or how easy and cheap it would be to produce games for them compared to the future PlayStation 6.
Microsoft has it harder. Xbox and Xbox 360 don’t generate the same affection, but the latter in particular could do it without any problem. Even if the big winner from this gamble could, at the end of the day, be Nintendo. A NES, a SNES, a Game Boy or practically any of its consoles before the Wii could sweep the board if it followed the Neo Geo AES+ route. And if they decided to publish new games for those consoles they’d sell as if they were making them for Nintendo Switch 2.
Because the question is, why not old consoles? What’s the problem with playing on a Super Nintendo, a PlayStation 2 or an Xbox 360? Are they obsolete, less fun, or is it no longer possible to program for them? They’re fully functional consoles and, in many ways, they’re more interesting than a new console generation. New isn’t necessarily better. Much less when it means a price out of reach for the vast majority of people. Why make absurdly expensive consoles if we can go back to previous consoles? The big three have a huge opportunity right in front of them that Plaion and SNK have shown them, they just have to see it.
