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goopy20 on 18 June 2020
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shikamaru317 said:

In the end things like this always come down to personal taste. Take me for example. I am a multiplat gamer who owns a Switch, a PS4 Pro, and an Xbox One. When trying to decide rather to buy Xbox Series X or PS5 first, there are many factors I took into consideration:

Games
The most important consideration for sure. Microsoft hasn’t even done their July show yet, and yet there are already many games they have announced that interest me. Halo Infinite, Everwild, Flight Simulator, Project Mara, Call of the Sea, Second Extinction, The Medium. Add those to heavily rumored early gen games like Forza Motorsport 8, Forza Horizon 5, Fable Reboot, and Perfect Dark reboot, and there is quite a lot to interest me of XSX in the early years of the generation. By comparison, Sony wise I am interested in Horizon 2, Deathloop, Tokyo Ghostwire, and Kena, but 2 of those are timed exclusives that I can eventually play on Xbox, while Kena is cross-gen, I can play it on PS4. As for other likely early gen PS5 games, God of War 5 has my interest and Spider-Man 2 might if they go back to Peter, but that is about it. Not very hyped for Naughty Dog’s future since they dropped Uncharted in favor of the rather meh TLOU. Never liked GT or LBP. Sucker Punch won’t have a PS5 game until mid-late gen since they chose to release Ghost of Tsushima so late this gen. Sony just doesn’t have as many early gen games to look forward to for me.

Design
I like simple designs, nothing too flashy. XSX is simple, PS5 is the very definition of flashy. PS5 is also far too big. Noise matters to me a lot as well, and Digital Foundry claims XSX is whisper quiet.

Services
While PS+ has been superior to XBL Gold recently in terms of free games, Gamepass so far is far superior to PS Now, thanks to day one 1st/2nd party games on Gamepass, as well as some 3rd party games available day one.

Controller
The edge goes to Sony on this one, I like that XSX has replaceable batteries, and I love XB1/XSX controller ergonomics. But MS played it too safe here, the controller is 90% the same as XB1. Sony on the other hand is offering innovations like improved haptics feedback and resistance triggers.

Backwards Compatibility

Definite edge for Xbox here. They have a lead of several years here. Not only will every XB1 game be available on BC, but also all OG Xbox and 360 games that were made BC last gen. And after XSX is out, BC team says they will go back to adding more OG Xbox and 360 games. Also MS offers BC enhancements on many BC games. I can for instance go back and play Witcher 2 on 360 at 4K 30 FPS with improved textures and other improvements over the original 360 release. Easy win for Xbox here.

In the end, XSX comes out on top by a pretty fair margin. And that is before the July show, which is sure to have many good surprises that will sway me even further towards buying XSX first. At this point the only thing that might sway me to get PS5 first is XSX being $100 or more above PS5, but I find that unlikely given the expensive custom SSD and controller innovations increasing costs on PS5. Even price is unlikely to change my mind at this point though.

Obviously, the games are the most important and to be fair, MS does have a lot of new ip's. It's just that they're all big unknowns and MS has an history of under delivering. I mean do Second Excitation and Call to the Sea really look like master pieces in the making? Maybe all of those games you mentioned will turn out great, but looking at MS's more recent track record (Crackdown 3, Project Spark, Minecraft Dungeons, Bleeding Edge, State of Decay 2, Recore, Sea of Thieves etc.), they can also turn out to be complete duds. 

Now even if you don't care about any of Sony's exclusives yourself, you have to admit that Sony's studios have a pretty stellar reputation when it comes to delivering. In fact, you can practically say that almost anything rolling out of a Sony studio will be quality stuff, even if its a complete new ip. MS, however, still hasn't released a single successful AAA franchise since Gears of War came out, and that was a 3rd party title. MS has been talking for years how things will change, but so far they've done a great job at proving the opposite. We've seen them rapid fire releasing one 1st party game after the other, and most people haven't even noticed.

Last edited by goopy20 - on 18 June 2020