Sony has replaced rumble with more sensation-specific haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, which delivers a much better gaming experience, as long as developers opt to support them. Like the consoles themselves, however, the best M.2 drive choices for the PS5 remain hard to find in stock.īelow are key takeaways from each platform as well as an updated specs comparison.Īside from its striking design, the first thing that stands out with the PS5 is the new DualSense controller.
Sony has also opened up the storage options for the PS5, first allowing PS5 games to be stored (but not played) from an external SSD, and more recently unlocking the system's internal M.2 slot for you to install your own secondary internal drive. Since the November 2020 launch, Sony has leaned into platform-exclusive games like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and Returnal, while Microsoft has pushed its expansive Xbox Game Pass catalog, including access to new games like The Ascent, Outriders and the upcoming Halo: Infinite.
Read more: Xbox Series X review: Game Pass is the secret weapon But both consoles have a similar total volume, roughly 447 cubic inches for the PS5, while the chunky Xbox Series X is about 432 cubic inches. They both support ray-tracing, decompression acceleration, whizzy new proprietary SSD implementations and a whole lot more.ĭesign-wise, the PS5 is predominantly white, slender and curvy (which Sony's PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan calls "bold, daring and future-facing"), while the Xbox Series X is a boxy, black tower.
They're based around roughly similar AMD Zen 2-architecture processors plus AMD Radeon Navi-generation graphics processors with 16GB of memory. To a lesser extent, they also compete for your time with mobile game-subscription services such as Apple Arcade.īoth platforms made a big leap in power over their predecessors. In addition to competing with PCs, consoles now face challenges from new hardware-free cloud gaming services such as Google Stadia, Amazon Luna and Nvidia GeForce Now, as well as Microsoft's own Xbox Game Pass Cloud Gaming. Read more: PS5 review: Exclusive games power Sony's space-age console Not because 4K-and-beyond-resolution video or ray-traced audio for more natural sound are must-have features, but because the gaming landscape is more complicated and fragmented since the previous generation of boxes came out. This chapter of the console wars is especially important. Nintendo's updated OLED-screen Switch is coming in October, and if you can find one, there's the $300 Xbox Series S, which is a scaled-back version of the Series X intended for 1440p gameplay rather than 4K. The key is to stay abreast of restock alerts, so keep an eye on our PS5 restock tracker or Xbox Series X restock tracker - or see if you can snag an equally hard to get Halo Infinite Xbox Series X. While shortages were to be expected during the initial launch, both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are still hard to get, and that shortage is expected to continue through the holiday 2021 season. That's of little comfort to the scores of gamers who still can't find one of these consoles in stock.
While the base hardware remains the same (aside from internal cooling tweaks in some new PS5 units), new software updates have added features, like more storage options and expanded cloud gaming access. As the PS5 and Xbox Series X near their one-year anniversaries, competition between the console kings remains fierce.