Easy: PlayStation.
Even
if you ignore the games (which is somewhat easy to do for Xbox because outside of Plague Tale in GP, Scorn, & High on Life Xbox nor GamePass had much in terms of notable big releases. Pentiment doesn't count and Grounded was basically a 2020 game finally coming out of early access), just look at the series of events that have transpired with both brands this year.
PLAYSTATION
-PSVR2 reveal and details rollout
-PS5 supply finally readily improved in most territories
-PS services revenue seeing increases thanks to PS+ Extra and Premium tiers
-Solid progress on Revision D PS5 system (streamlines PS5 production notably)
-Increased unit and revenue sales in spite of PS5 price increase in several markets
-Standing firm ground on stance of MS/ABK acquisition
-Investments in From Software, publishing deals for several titles in China Hero Project
-Successful PS Rewards rollout
and if you throw in actual games...
-Multiple 1P AAA releases to high critical & commercial success (GT7, HFW, GOWR), with huge sales milestones hit for GOWR in particular
-New exclusive reveals (Silent Hill 2 Remake, FF VII Remake Part 2, Death Stranding 2 etc.)
-Lead marketing deals on several big upcoming 3P AAA releases in the form of first reveals at SOPs or hosting SOP events for them (Hogwarts Legacy, Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, RE4 Remake, Callisto Protocol etc)
-Big award wins for 1P games at various awards shows over the year including the TGAs
versus...
XBOX
-No 1P AAA releases for the year
-Massive delays for Starfield & RedFall a month before new footage shown
-Disappointing reveal for Starfield gameplay (spotty graphics in places, bad framerate/framepacing, quantity over quality optics)
-Disastrous fallout of Halo Infinite playerbase and reputation among wider gaming market
-Disastrous showing for Halo Amazon TV show
-Very few notably big 3P Day 1 games for GP outside of Plague Tale: Requiem
-Lower-than-expected sales for Series S (leading to aggressive promotional and discounting deals beginning as soon as mid-Summer)
-CMA showing very high scrutiny into the ABK acquisition
-FTC announcing intent to sue over ABK acquisition day of the TGAs
-Xbox having nothing but GamePass xCloud commercials for the TGAs (previously they always had at least one big game or hardware reveal)
-Xbox coming in 3rd in NPD for November in spite of heavy Series S pricing discounts, promotions & deals
-Missing GamePass growth targets for 2nd time in a row
-ABK acquisition now likely to require large concessions in order to be cleared for approval (or else it gets shut down or MS decides to terminate the deal)
The difference between how the two brands have performed this year is
literally night and day. I think MS were hoping for the ABK acquisition to give them the juice necessary to get through 2022 relatively well, and maybe they were expecting something like GOWR to get delayed into early 2023. Because I would think even by say March they had to of had some knowledge of where Starfield & RedFall were at and knew they weren't going to launch by the time of the originally advertised dates.
In any case, 2023 looks like it should be better for Microsoft but the question is will it be enough? And enough for what? If by "enough" we mean Xbox overtaking PlayStation and/or Nintendo in mindshare or coming close to them in that respect, then the answer's a solid "
No". Sony simply has
way too much momentum now, and a
LOT more goodwill in general, and nothing MS is bringing in 2023 is going to deter much any of that. Spiderman 2 alone is going to crowd up a lot of the space aside from the expected annual COD release, and they also have Stellar Blade for 2023 as well (which looks like they will want to be their sort of Bayonetta type of deal). Similar with Nintendo, just look at the hype Tears of the Kingdom is getting right now and it's not due until June!
Most of the hype for Starfield is simply with a segment of the core Xbox & Bethesda fanbase but that June showing definitely marked anticipation lower for a lot of people, myself included. Meanwhile RedFall isn't even on many people's radar (not saying anything of the game's quality here; it could be fantastic), and Forza Motorsport is a known entity and has much less market appeal and mindshare than the Gran Turismo games. No GT releasing next year will help, but only slightly.
There's no indication that Hellblade II is ready for a 2023 release, same with Avowed (which even if it were, I doubt MS would want to cannibalize it by stuffing it and Starfield too close to each other). Fable seems like it's also a 2024 game at earliest, and Perfect Dark is probably a 2025/2026 release at this point. Everwild? Is it even still alive? SoD 3 is probably further out into 2024/2025 territory. The only other big 1P surprises MS can bring next year would be something from a Zenimax team it looks like, like a new DOOM, Wolfenstein or Quake.
If Starfield, RedFall & Forza do well with critics, fans, and in revenue, and other smaller timed exclusives (Replaced, that 2D detective game, Ravenlock tho I think that's just a Day 1 GP thing not timed) do well, and maybe if MS can get at least a couple of bigger 3P games Day 1 into GP (outside of MLB The Show, which is a known entity at this point b/c of MS's deal with the MLB League who acts as publisher on non-PlayStation platforms), then I think that'd be enough to help them regain some lost ground and be relatively healthy, even if I still think Sony & Nintendo are going to have bigger 2023s regardless. But one or two screw-ups, like if they handle this GamePass Family Plan & ad-supported rollout badly, or their 1P releases underperform with critics & gamers, can easily derail many gains they could have.
The ABK acquisition failing to go through would be a bit of a black eye on the brand but only indicative of a larger failure if the games MS have planned for 2023 don't perform as they should, or if GP ends up having another dry year, or they just don't seem to be doing much for the brand relative to Sony & Nintendo doing big things for theirs. Otherwise they can just kind of move on from that deal and focus on getting the games they already have in development out there and investing into those & the teams they already own, which is what
should have been the primary focus for the whole time but better later than never.
I dunno played a lot of good indies on playstation this year. Toem, Stray, Sifu, Inscryption, Rollerdrome, Olli Olli World, Cult of The Lamb…etc
People always undersell the presence of indies on PlayStation when in truth they get about just as many as Xbox. The only difference is most PS indies are not Day 1 in PS+. OTOH, indie games are generally cheap compared to the AAA releases.
But for some reason people putting enough value judgement into an indie game to actually want to buy it outright at $10 or $20 is viewed as a bad thing these days. They should just let larger corporations to pay for their bills and line their pockets altogether. The irony being, people who genuinely believe this don't understand the big corporations able to fully cover the costs of those games into their sub services, got to that point because
THEY grew their revenue & profits off selling directly to customers in open markets through capitalism.
But smaller indie devs with ambitions to grow aren't allowed to do so apparently; they should just be content staying small and have their revenue be beholden to what another company determines their game's value is worth :/