17 september 2020
16:57
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The rivalry with Microsoft has been rekindled now that Sony has unveiled the Playstation 5. With that, the Japanese hope to definitively leave the Xbox behind as the most popular game console.
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When Sony announced the price and release dates of the fifth generation Playstation on Wednesday evening, things immediately went fast. The sought-after gadget was sold out in no time in the so-called pre-order.
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Game journalist Jan Meijroos was one of the lucky ones. The Playstation 5 is bizarrely cheap for one next generation console, ‘he responds.
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The price of the top version, the version with a blue-ray player for games on CDs, is 500 euros. The Digital Edition without a disc tray, where you stream or download everything from the internet, costs 400 euros.
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Only a handful of fans can pre-order a copy for a new game console. Only later will the devices appear in the store and other web shops. In Belgium and the Netherlands, enthusiasts can find the two versions on the shelves on November 19. In the US, Japan and other countries, they come out a week earlier.
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Game console battle
For the past two decades, Sony has been engaged in a game console battle with Microsoft. The Playstation of the Japanese has already competed against the American Xbox four times before.
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According to many analysts, Sony has long since won the battle. For example, Microsoft sold 86 million copies of its most popular console, the Xbox 360, worldwide, while Sony sold almost twice as many Playstations 2.
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With the Playstation 5 and the imminent introduction of the latest Xbox, the Xbox Series X, the titans are again taking on each other. The soft price of the Playstation 5 probably has to do with that, says Meijroos.
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“Rumor has it that Microsoft deliberately leaked the price of the Xbox Series X in advance, so Sony made the PlayStation 5 cheaper for consumers.”
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Sony was able to keep the price of the Playstation 5 secret for a long time, because its presentation had been postponed several times. The reasons included the death of the black detainee George Floyd in the US and the ensuing riots.
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Game-rise
Thanks to the corona crisis, the game industry is experiencing golden times. Many people stay at home out of fear of infection and throw themselves into gaming. As a result, Sony’s stock price exploded by 46 percent since March.
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The Playstation 5 has to further expand the share price of the Japanese company. A communications director at Sony recently excited both consumers and investors. “The games will be better if you play them on the PlayStation 5 on a 4K TV.” Such a viewing tube has four times more pixels than a full HD TV.
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Game journalist Meijroos also thinks the experience will be greater. “The controller is almost futuristic, it has a motion sensor and you can feel the vibrations well,” he says enthusiastically. “That’s perfect for the upcoming version of Horizon Forbidden West, where the protagonist shoots the bow and arrow.”
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New games
Kenichiro Yoshida, who has led Sony for two years, has made video games an important part of the company’s growth plans. But Sony, just like Microsoft, hardly makes any profit with game consoles.
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More important are the new games that are being released and the software services around them. Sony invests a lot in mobile games and wants to make them accessible through 5G technology. The Japanese even have a partnership with Microsoft for game streaming technology, although a variant of the popular Twitch service by the Americans recently failed hopelessly.
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Meijroos is a bit disappointed in the presentation of the Playstation 5. ‘Nintendo immediately had a new version of the game Zelda with Switch, Microsoft would come with a new Helo. But Sony doesn’t have a big blockbuster at the 5. ‘
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