I have had consoles from Microsoft since the launch of the very first Xbox, but they were never my primary consoles. I always bought the Xbox for ‘on the side’, especially to play exclusives like Halo, Gears and Forza, while playing the bulk of my games on the PlayStation. This generation has turned the tables exactly.
Let’s face it, both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X don’t exactly get off to a flying start – not to mention the hardware delivery issues. Halo: Infinite was postponed for a year, but Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is also taking longer than I personally expected. The corona crisis is actually only now affecting the games industry and we will continue to suffer from it for a while. But on the Xbox Series X, I miss the growth of new games much less than on Sony’s platform.
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Just works
After all, with Game Pass I am fishing one game after another – twenty Bethesda games have been added, so I can keep going. They are mostly games from the previous generation or even older, but they also often run better. Some titles are optimized for the Series X, others at least for the One X with a higher resolution or frame rate, and some games look less outdated thanks to Auto HDR. Of course I also prefer to play native Series X games that really use the power of the new generation of hardware, but Microsoft cleverly narrows the gap between the current generation and the previous, and even the generations before that.
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Most important of all, it just works. Microsoft has its affairs in this area so much better than Sony. Thanks to Smart Delivery, I automatically play the best version of the game, without having to pay attention to anything, and saves are automatically synchronized, even if I have ever played a game on an Xbox One (or would play on my mobile via XCloud ). Have you ever tried to import an old save file from a PS4 game on the PS5? Man, what a cumbersome mess that is. Nice manual digging in the depths of the settings menu, no thanks.
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Don’t think, just play
The fact that Microsoft has its affairs in order does not come out of the blue. With the Xbox One X, Microsoft has already done a lot of preliminary work and that is now paying off. Sony still assumes that you play on one device at a time; the PS5 is the centerpiece. Microsoft now has a clear, device-agnostic vision, in which both the games and me as a gamer are central. I don’t have to think about which version I buy or install and whether I have downloaded my save files, or even which controller I pull out of the closet, the game console solves that for me. I can just play without any bullshit. In fact, while I’m on the toilet, I just browse the Game pass library and download it to my console so I can play right away. Technology serves people!
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How Microsoft fixes it – with Smart Delivery, Quick Resume, FPS Boost, Auto HDR, or whatever other technical name – will be a terrible concern to me, I just want it to work. With Netflix, I also don’t have to pay attention to whether I select Dolby Vision if it’s available, or remember which episode I’m on if I’m using a different device. To really become ‘the Netflix for games’, you also have to adopt the ease of use of the popular streaming service and the Xbox ecosystem is very well on its way in that regard.
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Weird times
And Sony? Sony has actually already lost me. I understand that for many people who are longing to wait until the PS5 is finally available again, that is a hard one, but for me that console is mainly large. I enjoyed playing Spider-Man and especially Astro’s Playroom, but have since made most of the multiplatform games for Xbox.
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Even games of which I have a PS4 copy in the closet, I prefer to download (via Game Pass) on my Xbox Series X. I therefore regret a bit retroactively that over the years I games for PlayStation consoles. I would have benefited more from an Xbox copy now. In the future, I have more confidence that Microsoft will continue to support my library properly.
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And so for the first time in my life I have the PlayStation for ‘on the side’, for the exclusives. How we all live in a strange time together.
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