PlayStation 5 sales surpass 40m worldwide
PlayStation 5 sales surpass 40m worldwide
PlayStation 5 has now sold 40 million consoles worldwide, Sony has announced. By comparison, PlayStation 4 -- the faste…
"PlayStation 5 has now sold 40 million consoles worldwide, Sony has announced."
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I honestly have no idea why. I have had both the PS5 and XSX since launch (yes, I got very lucky), and I have been a PS fanboy since the original, but the XSX is just way better IMHO. I barely use the PS5 unless it's for exclusives, of which there are very few.
I feel like there is a lot of inertia keeping people with what they know, but if you were to give a PS5 owner an XSX for a month, they'd go, "Oooh, I get it now!" and switch.
At a bare minimum, the XSX is much better for everything besides gaming (streaming, etc), the controller is SIGNIFICANTLY better (subjective, but man...huge difference), Gamepass is way better than PS+, and there are more exclusives on Xbox.
I wish the PS5 were better because I'd rather not support MS. But the gulf is so wide, it's hard to validate buying the PS5 in my mind. There's a reason I have a second XSX while the PS5 is gathering dust until Spider-man 2.
People have been saying these things since 2020 and it has convinced me that people in online gaming forums are out of touch.
Here's my argument against the Series X though:
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It has nothing I can't play on my PC. Even though Sony has started releasing their games on PC, their ports usually come years later. I don't hold this against Microsoft though, I'm more than happy to play games like Halo on PC instead of buying another console.
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Sony console exclusives are better and more numerous than Xbox exclusives. This has been the case since the Xbox One.
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The DualSense is a way cooler controller. I'm pretty miffed that the Xbox controller still doesn't have a gyroscope, When utilized properly a gyroscope makes aiming in shooters a lot easier.
So the way I see it, there isn't much reason to buy a Series X beyond its awesome backwards compatibility.
The DualSense is a way cooler controller. I'm pretty miffed that the Xbox controller still doesn't have a gyroscope, When utilized properly a gyroscope makes aiming in shooters a lot easier
This is obviously really subjective, but I strongly disagree. I despise games that make me move, and I refuse to play any that can't turn motion controls off. I like not having it in the controller, because then games can't force it on me.
Plus, I prefer just about everything else with the Xbox controllers. I don't have a series X controller, I'm still on my old Xbox One controller, but I prefer the haptic feedback in the triggers in the Xbox One controller over the DS. I like how light the Xbox One controller is. I really like the pips on the joystick. I like that I can use a USB wireless receiver with my PC, as the connection is more reliable than Bluetooth. I love the shape of the triggers, and I loooove the d-pad (it looks like the changed that in the later controllers, which makes me sad). I play a lot of retro platformers. Having grown up with a SNES, having a + d-pad instead of a disc is amazing to me. And the Xbox One's d-pad is so clicky and responsive. It makes for such a good experience when playing old Mega Man games where you need very precise movements with the d-pad.
That said, I don't dislike the DS. I have one, and I use it when PS exclusives come to PC and support the haptic feedback in the triggers. It's just not my preferred controller between the two. When I'm playing emulated retro games, I'll always use the Xbox One controller.
The Series X controller is a seriously nice piece of hardware. It feels solid and responsive in the hand, and as a bonus, it has really nice remappable back paddle kits from ExtremeRate available. I’m not a fan of their PS5 paddle solution, but they did a good job on the Xbox Series. I recommend at least picking up a series controller at some point, they’re great.
As I said, I mostly use my controller for retro gaming, and I need the + d-pad. Since the new controllers use a disc, that's pretty much a no-go for me. I would rather keep my Xbox One controller until it dies, as it's just the perfect controller for me.
I feel that. I play retro games on my SBCs, so that feature is less important to me on a console style controller.
Does even Sony utilize the gyro though? Returnal didn't when I played it on a friend's PS5, and that game really felt like it needed it to control comfortably.
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I think it's down to a few reasons. One you touched on is exclusives. Most consumers aren't going to have both consoles like you do, they're going to pick one or the other and Xbox doesn't really have many exclusives, even fewer than PS, and theirs are much more likely to end up on PC when they do have them. So for consumers who want the larger variety of games, PS5 currently wins.
Another is performance. While both the PS5 and Series X are comparable, the Series S offering has created a very odd phenomenon of accidental exclusivity for Sony because of performance limitations. It's a relatively new thing but I suspect it's going to be more common as the generation goes on. The current example is Baldur's Gate III. It simply cannot run on the S. As a result the developer has put an Xbox release on hold indefinitely and it may never come out on Xbox because they don't want to have to deal with the confusion of selling an Xbox game that is not playable on one of the two SKUs. They decided that if the S can't run it then it just won't come out for the X either.
Third, and probably more relevant earlier in the generation, Sony had some snappy gimmicks on their side that might have been a difference maker for some consumers on the fence. The advanced haptics of the Dual Sense for example. I think the novelty of that wore off pretty quickly but there was a lot of buzz around it closer to launch to the extent that it's impact on sales is probably more than nothing at all. I think the PSVR2 was also briefly a console mover as Xbox doesn't have comparable hardware. I don't think anyone at this point is rushing out to get a PS5 just for VR now, but there was a brief period of time after the PSVR2 was announced where people were eager to have a PS5 because if they did want VR, Sony's was the cheapest way into that market at modern performance levels without having to give Facebook your entire identity just to game. Again not significant on its own, but it's impact is more than nothing at all.
Fourth is just that Sony came into the generation ahead of Microsoft with the PS4. More PS4 owners with big libraries are going to want a new system that can play their old games rather than starting from scratch. So if you have a bunch of PS4 games that you still play, you're going to choose PS5 and it's kind of a no brainer.
And lastly I'd say Sony has just done a better job marketing it's console as a must-have piece of consumer tech. From the jump there were a lot of people who already had gaming PCs questioning why they would ever need an Xbox. And Microsoft did little to address this narrative, it almost felt like they accepted that they were going to cannibalize their own console's sales right from launch because everything gets ported to PC for them and just decided they didn't care. There are plenty of reasons to own an Xbox but MS has pushed like none of them in advertising. Sony meanwhile did a great job early on marketing the PS5 as a status symbol and has kept in the public eye much more consistently with game exclusivity, and more recently media tie-ins with the Last of Us tv show. And while the exclusives may be few and far between, they are big draws like Final Fantasy, Horizon, and Spider-Man. When Xbox occasionally gets an exclusive, it's always in the news for the wrong reasons like Halo almost universally agreed upon to be no longer good or Redfall being an absolutely embarrassing catastrophe of a release.
My issue at this point is I have SOOOO many PS games that I wouldn't want to have to re-purchase on Xbox. I've had a playstation since the 2 so have a pretty extensive library. If there was a way to transfer things over without re-purchasing I would likely make the switch. As it stands, I made my bed so now I lay in it, lol.
Wasting away on the walled garden with no hope of escape.
Next round look into a pc and emulate your old library. Break your chains!
We’re quite a ways away from emulating the PS4 library, sadly.
I have both also. The Series X is the more powerful machine, no doubt about it. I prefer the DualSense for everything but FPS games, though. I much prefer Sony’s exclusive lineup, and having ps4 games work makes it even better, because I much preferred Sony’s exclusives in that generation too. Overall I end up playing the PS5 far more often than my Xbox. Microsoft’s backwards compatibility is so great though. I love being able to pop in original Xbox games I have laying around and playing them in 4k. That alone was enough reason for me to pick it up.
I know it's about as subjective a thing as you can get, but I find the ergonomics of the DualSense to be atrocious. Like it's so bad that it hurts my hands to play for too long. I also hate the squishy feel of the triggers when they're not using the gimmicky feedback stuff. Overall, I was pretty amazed at how badly they ruined the controller for the PS5 compared to the PS4 one, IMHO.
It's funny to me to see people say they prefer it but hey... some (read: billions of) people also think Twitter was ever worth using. Different strokes for different folks.
The DS4 was too small for my hands, I always felt slightly cramped on it, even worse on the DS3, so the extra girth of the 5 helps me feel more comfortable. I Can see why it’s not universally loved though, for sure. It’s an odd controller overall, but it works well for me.m, especially the Edge.