A short while ago, I did my best to breakdown and explain all the technical garble presented to us by Microsoft on how powerful the Xbox Series X will be. As you’ll already know from that article/video, I’m a big old dumb dumb but even I was able to figure out what it all meant from a players perspective, I really wish I could say the same for the PS5.
Let’s address the Mark Cerny sized elephant in the room, that presentation last week was about as exciting as watching the latest PS4 update slowly install while you wait to play your favourite game. But what does it all mean? Unfortunately, even after doing a fair bit of research, I still can’t fully breakdown all this tech talk the same way I was able to with the Series X. This is simply because the PS5 tech presentation wasn’t for people like me, and they went out of their way to make sure that was the case. Now I know what you’re thinking, you came here for a ‘dummies guide to’ and this head dummy is sat here shrugging his shoulders… well yes, and I apologise for that.
What do you expect though? Although the Series X presentation a few weeks back was full of smart people talk, they still went out their way to tell us simpletons how that will benefit the player. For example; I know that I can have multiple games on standby, I know that every Xbox game back to the original will be playable and look better than ever, I know that if I was to buy an Xbox One game which is also scheduled for a Series X release, then Xbox will automatically upgrade it for me if I choose to upgrade to the Series X, and thanks to a surprising reveal at the The Game Awards 2019, we also know what the console and controller look like. Compare this to the PS5… all we know is that PS4 games will be playable on launch (most anyway) and it will have some big old SSD storage which will mean super fast loading times just like the Series X. That’s it, that’s pretty much all we know! Also if you stand the specs side by side, the SSD’s, Teraflops and other strange words, it looks like Xbox has the power advantage. The brutal truth to all this is that the Xbox feels exciting and the PS5 feels complicated. The 2020 console wars seem to show the score is 1-0 to Xbox right?
This may feel like an Xbox puff piece, I can assure you it is not! I’ve been a PlayStation loyalist for as long as I can remember and haven’t owned an Xbox since my 360 was demoted to a door stop back in 2008. Hell I even co-host a PlayStation themed podcast (keep an eye out for the return of the PS Pod by the way) so with that in mind, I take no pleasure in admitting that Sony are lagging behind the competition. Let’s look on the bright side though, what can Sony do to get us excited and is there some positives to take from last week’s failure of a presentation?
Games, games and games. The Series X looks to be the more powerful of the two, well guess what? The Nintendo Switch is weaker than both the current gen PlayStation and Xbox and many will argue that it can still boast the best exclusives. Yes power is important but it’s not going to be the deciding factor in this war, games will be. Even if the Xbox has the edge technically, it means nothing if they don’t have an IP as strong as God of War or Spider-Man. Also let’s not forget, expensive hardware means expensive price points and money talks a lot louder than who who has the most Teraflops. Surely Xbox will have learnt from past mistakes when it comes pricing though right?…right?
This conversation right here right now isn’t for the masses, it’s for us gaming nerds who just want to cling on to whatever information we can get our hands on before the big launch. This means that Sony still have plenty of time to get their message out there to the general public and to drum up silly amounts of excitement with what will hopefully be a massive launch title of some kind. Judging purely what’s in front of us though, it’s definitely the Series X which is leading the race, but the PlayStation fan inside me keeps saying that the PS5 hasn’t even got into second gear yet… this is far from over.
For more on the PS5 and Xbox Series X, make sure to keep an eye right here at Respawning, and if you still can’t get enough then check out my console wars video from earlier this year…