So now that the consoles have been out in the wild and I have had a few weeks using both, it is time to put them head to head and unleash the verdict; should you pre-order an Xbox Series X or a PS5?

The look

This turned out to be an easy battle. I was hoping the PS5 would grow on me, but whether sideways or upright, it is an ugly beast. The black plastic is that annoying shiny stuff that dust and hairs stick to, the fins look daft as hell, and the shape means you can’t put anything, like your PSVR box on top of it.

It’s ugly and impractical.

The Xbox Series X on the other hand is a big rectangle. It’s plain and boring, the opposite problem to the PS5. Given the two options, I will take the plain and boring any day as it works for any style you have going on.

Winner: The PS4. Seriously it was simple but had some style. This gen is a step backwards.

The UI

I absolutely hated the Xbox One’s interface. The PS4 on the other hand was a simple UI that anyone could navigate around with ease from the first time you tried it. So Simple that my three year old bought Ratchet & Clank one day with no issues.

That was the day I learned how to lock down purchases, and started playing Ratchet & Clank.  At least he picked a good game.

Xbox has made some minor tweaks to make this UI slightly better. The problem is it is only slightly better. The PS4 has taken their simple and clean UI and cluttered it, making it a little more difficult to find things like trophies. The simple hold the PS button on the controller to bring up power options has disappeared too, but fortunately Xbox kept theirs.

Winner: The PS4. Again. The PS5 is better between these two because it hasn’t gone as bad as the Xbox…yet.

Game Switching

When I started using the Xbox Series X I was immediately blown away by Quick Resume. You can be playing a game, suspend it and play another game, and return to the first game with no game time lost in seconds.

It’s a seriously cool feature because I can be playing Assassin’s Creed late at night and turn my Xbox off, my son can come home from school and play Minecraft, and when he goes to bed I can keep playing Asscree from where I left off.

This is an outstanding feature.

I got excited with my PS5 when it had a switch feature showing your last few games to quickly start. Excitedly I tried switching from SpiderMan: Miles Morales to Astros Playroom, to find I lost my Spidey progress.

Winner: Xbox Series X

The controller

As with the UI, Xbox has gone with what they had, and tweaked it to make it better. The controller is slightly smaller and has a better finish to the plastic. It feels good and is an improvement for sure.  

It comes with removable batteries instead of being built with a rechargable one which is an annoying choice.

The DualSense on the other hand is an outstanding piece of technology. The controller alone is a reason to upgrade to next gen. The adaptive triggers and the vibrations sensitivity as well as placement around the controller is absolutely outstanding.

Winner: The DualSense. It’s pure joy in controller form.

Value for Money

Both consoles offer backwards compatibility which is cool as you basically have a back catalogue from day one. The PS5 has come with the PS+ collection which has a handful of games including some of their excellent exclusives.

The Xbox Series X has Game Pass which is outstanding value. The monthly fee covers a massive selection of games from a wide spread of publishers. I would struggle to not find a bunch of good games to play every month, and a lot of great games I only tried because it was there so why not.

Winner: Game Pass Ultimate. The value in this service is undeniable and it is a great way for people to try a diverse set of games no matter their budget.

What I want to see from both consoles.

I want Xbox to steal the tech in the DualSense, and I want PlayStation to steal the Quick Resume feature.  

It is that simple, both consoles will be much better. I’d also like it if they didn’t look brutalistic or avant garde and just did something console shaped, but maybe I expect too much.

Xbox Pros and Cons

Pros

The Series X and Series S give different prices for different budgets

Quick Resume

The Spark deal lets you pay it off over time

The controller is slightly better than XB1

Game Pass Ultimate rules

Hasn’t crashed…yet

Cons

Loots like a fridge

The controller needs batteries or a battery charge kit

The controller isn’t a Dual Sense

PS5 Pros and Cons

Pros

SpiderMan Miles Morales

The DualSense is revolutionary

PlayStation+ Collection is great for new players

UI is better than Xbox, but worse than PS4

Cons

More expensive

Most games I have played have crashed at least once

Ugly as sin

Had a lot more games crash on PS5 than Xbox Series X

What should you buy?

Budget Conscious

If you are a cash strapped gamer who wants to play a wide variety of games, then a Xbox Series S with Game Pass is hard to look past. A much lower price, a lot of power, and a wide selection of games with additions every month is hard to look past.

Not Budget Conscious but Budget Aware

The Xbox Series X with Game Pass is outstanding value. A beefy system with a diverse selection of games on Game Pass is hard to look past. It’s a consistently great console that has good shelf appeal. That service pays off the cost of the unit in no time, and that back catalogue of Xbox exclusives is amazing value.

“What’s a Budget?”

The PS5 might look like a normal console exploded and warped in the sun, but boy that DualSense is fantastic. You’re paying a few bucks more, and the PlayStation+ Collection offers the most value to newbies in the ecosystem, but that controller is absolutely outstanding.

The post What should you buy? PS5 vs XBSX appeared first on 8-Bit Island.

I can’t believe it’s been seven years since we saw the Xbox One, but the time has finally come for next gen. The Xbox Series X is here, and ready to show you why you need this refrigerator-esque console.

I’ve been playing with it for a week, and: wow. Wow in some expected ways, and wow in some unexpected and frankly crazy ways.  

Next gen and it’s an obelisk

There have been a lot of jokes about how the Xbox Series X looks like a fridge, or monolith, but I love the unassuming shape. If you have it standing upright, the simple and tall rectangle with the glow on top looks pretty damn cool. The design means it fits the aesthetic of any entertainment suite, and it towers above all the other things on your cabinet.

Because I like slotting consoles into shelves, I stuck my Xbox Series X sideways and pushed to the back so the fan could move air around it. Because of the square shape it gets fairly close to touching the top of the shelf, but shoving it to the back means you have a nice bit of space for the controllers and extras to fit in front, as you can see below.

In this way I was surprised at how much I liked the new console. With my controller sitting in the space in front, the Xbox Series X is subtle and unimposing, with a nice dim glow from the all seeing eye … I mean the touch button / Xbox logo light.

The smooth next gen upgrade

Usually with next gen upgrades, there’s a cutoff where you basically play as many older games as you can before you trade in the console and games and tackle what is new on the next machine. The Xbox Series X feels less like the next gen change of times past, and more like you upgraded your old dated gaming PC for a nice shiny new one.

Of course, modern consoles are basically just PCs running proprietary software, but that’s a story for another day.

Starting up and logging in was as smooth as Microsoft-branded butter. You can sign into your account using your cell phone, so things like typing in your password is easier than ever. Then straight away you can start downloading your back catalogue, or some nice shiny new games, and Bill’s your uncle; we’re in.

The OS is effectively a tweaked version of the Xbox One’s, which means it’s comfortably familiar out of the gate, and immediately I got to downloading. Any games I had half finished with usable saves on my Xbox One I jumped into. It’s the same thing, yeah, but faster. The boost in processing power makes a massive difference, but still leaves you feeling comfortable navigating around pages you have seen before.

Quick Resume your way to the future 

The biggest feature that the Xbox Series X offers, and a life changing one for me personally, is Quick Resume. The last gen introduced suspended games, letting us put our consoles to sleep, then turn on the next day and carry on without worrying about checkpoints and all that jazz. This became an everyday quality of life improvement that many found indispensable. Quick Resume is already that for me, this time tracking across multiple games.

I can play Ori and the Will of the Wisps until some ungodly hour of the night, put my console to sleep, and know that if my son comes home from school and plays Mineecraft, I haven’t lost any progress. I cannot understate how amazing this is. Last gen I would only use that feature on my PS4, because the youngling would play Minecraft on the Xbox before I got home, potentially wiping all my precious progress. Now? I’m free.

Quick Resume has already become a staple in my household, and new features are what new gens are for, right?

The power of next gen is here

The supercharged processing power was intensely apparent thanks to backwards compatibility. I jumped straight into games that my Xbox One had struggled with and it. Was. Heaven. Load times reduced, graphics and frame rates increased. Most of us, including myself, don’t have the labs or money to do some full on testing, so for this I recommend you check out Ars Technicas comparison work. In the raw numbers the difference is clear, but even a laygamer like me can immediately tell there’s some cool stuff going on under that boxy exterior.

How this works with more powerful games down the line, we’ll have to wait and see. But I’m excited.

The value of next gen is here

I have ranted about how great Xbox Game Pass is before, and it keeps holding up. I could easily play Game Pass games for the next six months without buying anything new, at which point the Xbox Series X has basically paid for itself.

A quick look at the current library shows the expected Xbox exclusives like Halo, Fable, Gears of War, and Forza Horizons. If you are new to the Xbox ecosystem, that’s a few months right there. Add to this the newer Yakuza games, Kingdom Hearts, Doom Eternal, The Outer Worlds, Darksiders, Batman Arkham Knight, FF VII, FFIX, FXV, the Outer Wilds, Dead Cells, Carrion, Cross Code, Indivisible, Hollow Knight, and so many more you’ll think you’ve accidentally wandered into the main storefront. This right here? Value.

Seriously, I am looking at the list and seeing a ton of games I want but won’t have time for, as well as the EA Play games that are being thrown in for the subscription price. How do they make money on this? I don’t know or care; I just know this is awesome.

Xbox Series X – Hard to not see the value

The Xbox Series X has been an awesome experience so far. The console looks nice and tidy, packs a lot of power in, and easily justifies its price. I would have liked a bigger change in the UI so it was more streamlined like the PS4’s was, but it is a seriously awesome next gen console that brings quality of life improvement and pays for itself with Game Pass.

Best of all, this time Xbox is leaning into the jokes.

And hey, if for some reason you need even better value for money or don’t know when to upgrade, it’s always a great idea to keep your eyes on Price Spy. This isn’t sponsored, we just think it’s neat.

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