Two major console manufacturers have already presented their new devices - gamers saw the Xbox Series X in late 2019, and Sony revealed PlayStation 5 in June 2020.
Once again, the gaming community becomes divided on fans of Xbox or PlayStation and those who witness their pointless fight. For the fanguys, the choice has been made already - and that’s great because it’s ok just to enjoy the hardware, ecosystem, and games of your choice without any thinking. For many others, it’s a work in progress. Good news: we still have time till the holidays 2020 (and many years ahead).
The choice between these two game consoles often gets limited to specs comparison. One group is praising teraflops and the other is enjoying the super fast SSD. But at the end of the day, no one will really care about those specs sitting in front of their TV and playing games. Other aspects become much more significant.
Both consoles will make that inter-generational leap. PS5 and XSX are both amazing enough to continue the traditions of their predecessors and boost the quality of gaming life for their owners. Who is thinking now about tech specs while making a decision on purchasing PS4 or Xbox One? So why tech specs should be a powerful factor for the choice of next-gen consoles?
Exclusives - the weapon of PlayStation
“If you have a PlayStation, you can play these awesome games” - Sony has been playing with this strategy for many years and achieved super powerful success. Uncharted, God of War, Spider-Man, Ratchet and Clank, Gran Turismo: these are only a few examples of the game series you can play only on a PlayStation. And they are so good that purchasing the console especially for them is quite a reasonable decision. After all, you will have those multiplatform games as well.
Sony has a family of developing companies and long relationships with partners to produce exclusives year after year. Microsoft can’t offer the same mostly due to the strategy to combine Xbox and Windows gaming into one ecosystem. The list of Xbox/PC exclusives is not so impressive as one of PlayStation: Halo, Forza, Sea of Thieves, Sunset Overdrive, and Gears 5 are the very famous examples.
Game Pass - the best offer of Xbox
Microsoft purchases new studios and makes deals with developers to add their products to the Xbox Game Pass library. It’s arguably the best subscription service in the industry. You pay around $10 per month and have unlimited access to a huge list of game titles. Minecraft, Forza, Gears 5, Red Dead Redemption 2, No Man’s Sky - with the Game Pass, you have these and many other games. The first-party releases become available for the subscribers on the day one.
Unlike exclusive games, this offer doesn’t limit gamers in the choice of device. Xbox Game Pass is available on PC as well. This decision may not boost the sales of Xbox Series X, but at the same time, it makes the gaming department of Microsoft less dependent on those sales to be more flexible in the game creation process.
Apart from the PlayStation 5 exclusives and Game Pass on Xbox Series X, we can consider another quite significant factor - the general feeling of being part of the specific community.
It’s not only the color of the logos and slogans in advertising videos. It’s more about the subtle atmosphere, created by the companies and their fanbases. Just try and feel it. If something in the PlayStation or Xbox universe makes you happy - join the community and enjoy your choice. It’s easy to make the decision if your friends are already there. Playing together is fun, and both ecosystems are great for this.
The other factors, such as the console design, the gamepad form, and even the price of the devices are rather secondary.
- Xbox Series X introduces Smart Delivery that allows playing any Xbox games on any Xbox console with the best possible quality. It sounds great, but first, it’s not a console-purchasing decision, and second, it’s doubtful that all the developers will put enough effort into adapting their games for both the previous and the next generation.
- PlayStation 5 will also have the Backward Compatibility feature. It is still unknown how it will work.
PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X have already revealed their best cards - and no one is objectively better because this is strictly an individual choice.
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Nintendo is also strong with their very good exclusive games. One of such franchises is the Pokémon series.
The necessity to purchase new consoles to play new games may soon become part of gaming history. Thanks to the game streaming services, you can play even the most demanded virtual adventures on outdated PC and mobile devices.
