In the gaming world, these are the two most important weeks of the year. The Xbox Series X came out last week, today it’s on the PlayStation 5. The new generation of consoles has been waited for seven years. They are now flying over the counter. Those who want to buy one today even have a problem: they are hardly available anywhere. The chances are minimal that you will have one at home before Christmas.
Not surprising, because worldwide demand for new consoles is enormous. The PlayStation 4 has sold more than 114 million times in recent years. The Xbox One, the predecessor of the Series X, has been purchased 48 million times. Meanwhile, the corona pandemic is pushing up demand for the new consoles – because we’re home a lot, and therefore play more.
Both Microsoft (producer of the Xbox) and Sony (of the PlayStation) have dripped little information in recent years to build up the hype surrounding the new consoles. It was clear that the successors to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One would be a lot faster than their predecessors. What therefore dominated the news in the run-up to the release of the two game consoles, was the appearance of the consoles.
The Xbox Series X turned out to be a black tower, and the PlayStation 5 stood out for its hefty size and shape; was it a console, router or humidifier that you brought into your home? Many people compared the console to household appliances, something designer Yujin Morisawa liked. “When you design something, you want it to feel comfortable. Sometimes it looks like a plant, animal or object. That’s better when it’s really strange, or something that people have never seen before,” he told the Washington Post.
And now the inside
But, enough about the outside: what’s inside the device counts. The consoles have become more powerful and have a fast SSD drive for storage. This makes games load much faster.
“That is the most important leap. Now you are hardly looking at a loading screen, while in previous generations it could take minutes,” says game journalist Bastiaan Vroegop. He tested both consoles. “Games are already beautiful, there is no need to make such a big leap. That is why limiting the loading time makes a lot of difference to the user.”
“When you start playing, it is a lot of little things that run smoother,” explains Jurian Ubachs of Tweakers. He also tried out both devices. “You notice that most with the Xbox. You have the same interface, but so much smoother and faster. That doesn’t sound that important, but you notice it every time you play.” In that respect, both devices are close to each other.
Controller makes a world of difference
Where the real difference is made, it sounds unanimous in reviewers, is the controller. Microsoft has changed almost nothing in that area. Sony chose to take care of this.
“The PlayStation 5’s DualSense makes all the difference,” says Ubachs. “Especially because of the triggers and the so-called haptic feedback.” Small vibrations now let you feel what the character experiences in the game. When you walk, you can feel the footsteps, and you can feel it with tall grass or changing surfaces. “That gives a completely different feeling in your hands.”
The triggers, the two rear shoulder buttons, can dose resistance. For example, when you tighten a bow, you feel the tension on the rope.
Not many games yet
Early on: “That gives the illusion that you used the weapon your character must have used. That makes games more immersive than I had previously thought. You become more involved. You notice that well with the new Spider-man, for example.” Although he makes a comment. “We have yet to see how much of this is used by game developers.”
Which brings us to another pain point of these two new consoles: where are the big exclusive games? “At Microsoft there are not really release games,” says Vroegop. “Games that are optimized, but they also appear on the Xbox One. They make a smooth transition. That’s kind to the people who own Xbox One, but it doesn’t really make the new console feel like a party. At PlayStation they make more work of it now, with Spider-Man, Sackboy, Godfall in Demon’s Souls.“
The potential of these devices is therefore clear, reviewers say, but there are no games yet that harness the full power of the consoles. Is it therefore necessary to buy the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 right away? No, it sounds with Vroegop and Ubachs. You can safely wait a while until the game you want to play is on the market.
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