At the end of the year, Microsoft and Sony will release Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. PS5 still do not know the design, but Microsoft itself has revealed almost all the details of the console, including its components, design, control and technical characteristics. However, there is one important detail: it may be the only console you can do without.
Choosing which console to buy is quite a complex process, since you have to take into account a multitude of factors. Among them can be the power of the console, the price, the remote you are used to, what console your friends have, or most importantly: what games each console will have.
Ahead of this Christmas, the doubt of most users who want to play video games will be to choose between PS5, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch or PC . Each platform has its exclusive games, where Sony and Nintendo have titles that cannot be played on any other platform. In the case of Xbox, all its exclusives come out on PC, and there are few who justify buying the console.
If you have or are going to have a PC, an Xbox Series X does not make sense
So if you like video games, chances are you already have a PC. On PC you can play all Xbox games without problem, since Microsoft has launched all its exclusives in Windows 10 for years, in addition to allowing cross play.
Although this is very good for the user, it also plays against Microsoft itself, since if you have a mid-range or high-end PC it doesn’t make much sense to buy an Xbox because you will be able to play the same games, where you will only have to lower the graphic quality a bit at most. In addition to the Xbox exclusives, on PC you will have the PC exclusives, where there are a multitude of online games, and many of them free such as CS: GO or Dota 2.
The advantages of playing on PC and have listed several times, but among them is clear that it is the best platform in terms of power , because it can hop a computer now much more powerful than current consoles, and even compete in power with the new ones. In addition, you can play games from decades ago, buy them much cheaper, use a keyboard and mouse, not have to pay online, and a long etcetera. Also, you probably already need to have a PC at home.
Consoles, usually, usually come out with a power on par with computers of similar price. This year it seems that we will see an exception, since although the price of the Xbox Series X has yet to be confirmed , it probably will not exceed 600 euros, which is already less than what the combo of graphics card and equivalent performance processor costs on PC. Of course, it should be borne in mind that the console uses a graphics card with an architecture that is not yet for sale, and towards the end of the year we will see new cards from both AMD and NVIDIA that will help reduce the large distance between both platforms in terms of performance / price.
However, in the long term you end up saving on PC, with cheaper games , and above all by not having to pay online. Thus, at 5 years, it is possible that we are saving figures of at least 300 euros, with the additional advantage of being able to use the PC for more things and also be able to update it whenever we want.
Exclusive Battle
And even if you decide you don’t want a PC, and your decision is only based on one console or the other, exclusive games make the balance tip in Sony’s favor. Microsoft’s exclusive games are far from equal in quality and number to those of PlayStation. Microsoft can hardly boast of titles like Forza Horizon 4, Forza Motorsport 7, Gears 5 or Sea of Thieves. For its part, Sony on PS4 has impressive exclusive sagas that are not available on Xbox such as Uncharted, The Last of Us, Gran Turismo, God of War, Horizon, Death Stranding, Until Dawn, The Last Guardian Detroit: Become Human, and a long etcetera.
In fact, titles like Horizon and Death Stranding are going to come out on PC, while at the moment they are not going to come out on Xbox. Here we see that Sony itself is aware of who its enemy is, since it makes a lot of sense to release a game on PC after it takes time on console to reach a much larger audience than the console itself. If everything works well with Horizon and they get great additional benefits, in the future they may decide to launch even more games that allow you to even do without a console. Therefore, PC has the Xbox games plus some from PlayStation.
In addition, we have a fourth participant: Nintendo Switch . The console is ideal to play anywhere without depending on a monitor or a television, and it also has dozens of exclusive titles where it is very clear that the power is the least when creating a fun game. Thus, with the PC and PlayStation combo you can play all the games on the market without taking Nintendo into account, and if you can afford it, with Switch you won’t miss any.
There will only be one situation where having an Xbox Series X makes sense: that you prefer to play multiplatform games and you prefer to save money in the short term without taking into account that games and online will be more expensive. Looking at the numbers, Xbox Series X will be more powerful than PS5, and therefore games will likely use higher resolution or some other type of graphic enhancement. Some developers claim that development on Xbox is very complex and the number of 12 TFLOPs will not always be reached, so we will see if the games on Xbox Series X really live up to their technical specifications. Therefore, games like FIFA or Call of Duty should have improvements in Xbox Series X that we would not see in PlayStation 5, but there is still a lot to see the real performance in both.
In short, having a PC allows you to play all multiplatform games saving money in the long term, and in the case of wanting a console, PS5 will offer a better catalog . Microsoft has a serious problem to solve with its exclusive titles, and PS5 has at the moment all the winnings in the absence of knowing the price and the final performance of both platforms.
