We all have seen the memes of the Series X and the PS5, they look a little wack. But outside of some very different ideas for design choices, what exactly put each console ahead of the other? Truth be told, I saw nothing from either stream that convinces me that either one will outclass the other.
That being said, maybe each one of them does have a specific edge to utilize. And before you jump down my throat and tell me how wrong I am, let’s go over the fine details, shall we?
Series X Will Be More Powerful, Hands Down
Again, hear me out, there’s a conversation to be had here. One of the biggest reasons that people jumped ship to Sony this last generation was the underperforming Xbox One.
I was one of those people, the original One console left an awful lot to be desired. Including an incredibly bulky build that made any sort of portability impossible. PlayStation had its share of issues, namely insanely loud fans that could be heard from two rooms away.
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But, on paper and inside the machine, the Series X is without a doubt more powerful. It’s boasting higher clock speeds, larger GPU processing power, large storage capacity etc and all within a smaller footprint than PS5.
And what did we see from the Livestream for PlayStation? Well, it’ll have Ray Tracing, 3D sound, NVMe drives and an updated controller. Or in other words, the only thing to be excited about is the NVMe drives. Because everything else that was listed isn’t anything new. PC’s have had 3D sound support for a while, everybody is doing Ray Tracing and an updated controller is a ‘duh’ moment.
Now to be fair to both parties, the Series X controller is a mild upgrade. Although, the Xbox Controller has also been widely considered as the best on the market and the most comfortable and thus remains similar. Playstation Controllers on the other hand, change every generation and constantly have breaking issues.
Not trying to start a flame war, just speaking the truth as a player on both sides of the game.
Sony Has Tons of Great Exclusives
I mean, what do you want me to say to this? Yeah, no kidding it has tons of amazing exclusive titles. Last of Us, God of War, Gran Turismo, Killzone, Uncharted, Resistance, Spider-Man, Horizo– oh wait.
Worth mentioning, half of the exclusive FRANCHISES (not indie titles) on Sony are discontinued or ending. Uncharted had its finale, as did Resistance, Killzone has been permanently shelved etc.
There are outliers, obviously, and those outliers are some of gaming’s all time best outings.
Microsoft isn’t a slouch in exclusive content, which is something that always confused me when it came to console wars. MS gave us Halo, Forza, Gears of War, Sunset Overdrive to name a few.
“But Tooooom” I hear you say, “those are all action heavy no story games that took minimal creative effort. You can’t compare Halo to God of War or The Last of Us!” Well, I absolutely can compare it to God of War, because they’re both action heavy fantasy stories set in a fictionalized version of our own planet Earth. What about story heavy games then? Let’s see here: Quantum Break, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Halo 4, The Turing Test shall we continue?
Can we just stop with the measuring contest between who has the best exclusives and just admit that there’s an argument to both? Besides, with a huge increase in crossplay capabilities, who cares anymore?
Backwards Compatibility, Or Lack Thereof
Microsoft confirmed this rumor pretty early on. Series X will be backwards compatible with everything. Yes, I do mean everything.
Original Xbox Games? Yup. How about those Xbox 360 games? You betcha. Xbox One? Oh absolutely. So if you have a pile of older Xbox games than you want to go back and explore, then go right ahead.
Sony? Well, they do have backwards compatibility, strictly for PS4 games. Because they do not want to limit the hardware progression of their developers and software engineers. Here’s my question, how is that limiting? Allowing someone to play an older game does not take much thought or creative process.
PC Gamers have been doing it since the dawn of time, don’t pretend like it’s some monumental task that will require years of setbacks.
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We all Saw The Same Thing, Why Are We Pretending It Was Amazing?
After the live stream for Sony’s PlayStation 5, there started popping up accusations that Microsoft was ‘shaking’. That for some reason this reveal stream was such a step up from the Series X stream that it changed the playing field.
I gotta ask, what exactly was the big differences between the two streams? I’m honestly asking. Because from what I watched, the only difference was games shown off and the logo of the company.
Both streams showed off the Series X and PS5’s graphical prowess with a few short demo reels. For the Series X, it was Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, for PlayStation it was Ratchet and Clank. Cool, the games look pretty and the consoles are powerful, duh.
Oh but PlayStation showed off more games with in-game footage instead of rendered trailers! SPOILER ALERT, THEY’RE ALL RENDERED TRAILERS. Just because you use in-game engine footage instead of Blender doesn’t really make a giant difference!
Neither of the streams showed hardly ANY gameplay! Matter of fact, if you use gameplay to make a trailer, that’s still a trailer!
Both of the reveal streams did the. Exact. Same. Thing.
In Summary
Both consoles are going to have upsides and downsides to them. Inevitably this generation will still see everyone complaining about the other side and saying that their console is superior, why? What is it going to accomplish?
Series X is going to be more powerful, PS5 is going to have a large catalogue of exclusives. Both consoles are going to be a massive step up in graphical prowess, audio, storage and processing speeds. And both communities are going to keep clamoring and screaming that one reveal stream was better than the other.
Does it really matter? Why are we making it matter?