Menu
Even with tempting prices, I’m not quite ready to join the next-gen club.
Garrett H.
The PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X are going to be some budget powerhouse consoles. They’re the same price as a new low-tier graphics card, they’re built to be incredibly fast, especially compared to the internal hard disk drives of past consoles, and the exclusives, oh the exclusives.. they’re going to amaze..
That’s what I sort of hoped would happen.
Quick warning, this article is going to be more of a subjective explanation of these two consoles, and why I’m not investing in one yet, so for a more in-depth dive into the actual technical and design aspects of the consoles, tune in later. These are also my opinions, and I do not specifically agree with or support one of these consoles.
The PS5 (PlayStation 5), and the XSX (Xbox Series X) are set to launch on November 12th, for $499 and on November 10th, for $499, respectively.
Both of these consoles are extremely powerful, especially when compared to last generation consoles, and even taking into account some of today’s gaming PCs.
For example, the PS5 is capable of 10.28 teraflops of raw graphical power, while the Xbox is capable of 12 TFLOPS. A GTX 1080 Ti, the top graphics card of around two generations ago, sits at around 11.3 TFLOPS.
Teraflops are not necessarily an indication of power or actual in-game performance. It is literally just one trillion operations a second per teraflop. This could be bits, 1 or 0, math equations, whatever. That’s besides the point.
What really matters is that footage of 4K 60FPS on both consoles has been released, which is where the real comparison happens.
Preceding a semi-important announcement from NVIDIA, the cheapest way to play in 4K60, was with the $499 RTX 2070 Super, which you then had to pair with a CPU, power supply, case, storage, memory, etc.
Now, consoles cost the same as the cheapest entry ticket into 4K, but with a CPU, case, storage, memory, power supply, and the others built into that price.
That’s impressive, but not quite as impressive as the new product that NVIDIA had announced a couple of weeks ago: the RTX 3070.
This $499 graphics card follows the same issue as buying an RTX 2070 Super, but provides future proofing with up to 4K 120Hz without raytracing. That’s insane. Through in the ability to upgrade outdates parts one bit at a time, and avoid a $220 removable storage expansion card for the Xbox.
That’s a lotttt of money for a 1TB SSD, which on PCs, you can swap out for around $100 for a budget one.
I’ve never owned a gaming PC before, and the entry cost is ridiculously high, but once you get past it, you get future proofing, as well as access to higher power, continuously evolving graphics, as well as the ability to upgrade individual parts.
The second part is exclusive games.
PC is getting way more “exclusive games” than one might think. Remember, Horizon Zero Dawn has come to PC, FNAF: SB is coming to PC at the same time as on PS4; through PS Now, you can get PS games, and Xbox.. well
Xbox Game Pass gives access to hundreds of previously Xbox exclusive games, directly to PC, at whatever quality or framerate you want. Microsoft has said that all day one exclusives will come to Game Pass.
These reasons are why I’m not going to buy a gaming console for next-gen. At least not yet. There’s still a chance depending on overall pricing for PC options, but overall, the signs are pointing me away from being locked to one brand of games.
Statural.com is an independently owned and operated news website, providing useful information across five major categories.
© 2020 Statural. All rights reserved
