Sony knows it’s on top the ps4 easily outsold every other console from the last generation but instead of resting on florals with the PlayStation 5. Sony has developed a box that can really go pound for pounds with the Xbox series x. For the most part and also has a pretty innovative controller. While the ps5’s design may be a matter of taste. I think sony at least succeeded in doing something Microsoft couldn’t gather. A great selection of games that people actually want to buy that actually take advantage of its new hardware.
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The PlayStation 5 is so large it dwarfs every other console under my tv. It honestly towers over the Xbox series x which is a big boy in its own right. The PlayStation 5 measures 15.4 inches tall and 10.2 inches deep and it weighs a hefty 10.2 pounds with its required stand. The center of the console houses all the major internals but it’s flanked by two plastic bins on the side. It’s almost as if sony basically exploded the design of the original PlayStation 3 model giving this console a retro feature style that reminds me a bit of back to the future too to each their own right.
I’ve always been a fan of sony’s industrial design. So I warmed up to this look pretty quickly but I was really disappointed the first time I actually touched it. The ps5 just feels cheap and flimsy mostly do those fins. Because they’re made of very very thin plastic in comparison the Xbox series x may look dull and boring. It’s just a box but it feels sturdy and dense and strong in the way. The ps5 doesn’t now I get it sony wanted to optimize as much airflow into this console as it could. So those spins actually serve to direct air through the entire system. I just wish sony could have come up with a design that just wasn’t so unwieldy.
While i have many concerns about the way the system looks and feels under the hood. It’s less of a problem the ps5 is poised to deliver a solid 4k gaming experience. It’s powered by a custom 8 core zen 2 processor and a 10.2 teraflop rdna 2 gpu on paper. Its gpu capabilities may seem to lag behind the 12 teraflop xbox series x. But as we’ve written about before teraflops are a notoriously sloppy way to determine how fast the system can actually perform both. The xbox series x and ps5 also feature 16 gigabytes of gddr6 ram which each console kind of handles differently.
When it comes to memory bandwidth but either way they’re a major upgrade over the last generation. Both new consoles rely on really fast nvme SSD to store games and that’s going to be a huge benefit over the older mechanical hard drives. One big plus for sony though is that you can actually pop open the side of the PlayStation 5. That’s why those fins are so so thin and plug in a new SSD of your own that’s not a feature. That’s going to be available at launch but down the line. It’s going to be a cheap way to add in more high-speed storage.
Sony’s new dualsense controller meanwhile is probably my favorite thing about the ps5. For once it doesn’t look exactly like the playstation controller from the mid 90s sony kind of stuck with that design for a while they added analog triggers and you know motion sensing and whatnot. But the basic design was always the same the dual sense is bigger so much bigger than the dual shock 4. I really like the fact that the grips are larger. So that they just feel more ergonomic in my hands. The colors are different too it’s black and white.
This time you have translucent jewel-like buttons. There’s a mute button also that’s meant just for the onboard microphone. And what’s most impressive about the dual sense is. What’s inside its triggers are adaptive and on the fly. A game can adjust the tension the dual sense almost feels like it’s alive in your hands. I’ll be honest the first time. I loaded up Astros playroom the controller kind of jolts. And it felt as if it was grabbing me and I wasn’t grabbing it. The vibration on the controller is so finely tuned. Now you can actually feel the difference between astral walking in sand or walking on wood or walking on metal to me. This is the full realization of the whole HD rumble idea that Nintendo was trying to go for with the switch.
Now let’s talk about the setup because before you can start using your PlayStation 5. You have to learn how to install its stand and seeing a set of instructions for installing a physical stand that look like ikey instructions is the last thing I want to deal with when I have a shiny new piece of hardware on my hands. It screws onto the bottom of the console in vertical mode and in horizontal mode. It kind of sticks in the back there’s nothing actually holding it in the back horizontally though it’s just purely tension.
Once you figure out how to install the stand and get everything plugged in. There’s actually a game on the system that you can play before doing any updates before downloading anything else. Astros playroom is just there you can just pick it up and play. It teaches you a lot about the controllers like really. It is the most extreme example of what sony can do with the dual sense. I don’t expect many developers are going to start using that much but hey it’s really cool. The game is a lot of fun and it’s a great intro to this whole new universe of nextgen gaming. I was also happy to find that. The PlayStation 5 actually downloaded games from sony’s servers a lot faster than the ps4. It took me around 50 minutes to get a 40 gigabyte game.
I think sony is just the strongest this generation spider-man miles morales isn’t a next-gen exclusive. But it is a game that takes full advantage of this hardware out of the box. It’s running at 4k 30fps with ray tracing and lots of graphical fidelity turned on. It looks fantastic it plays very smoothly. It is the best-looking console game I’ve ever seen bar none. But here’s the thing 30fps may have been a great thing last generation. For this generation.
I want 60fps because that typically looks faster and that’s been the standard for pc gaming for so long. So I ended up opting for the 60fps mode in miles morales. You lose rate chasing you lose some of the special graphical fidelity but it feels so much smoother. It feels so much better swinging around the city that I couldn’t live without it. I would have liked to see a 1080p mode that could fit in both ray tracing and 60fps. I don’t mind losing a little resolution if it means I can get all the other graphical niceties.
Now if you hear me talk about these next-gen games just keep in mind I’m always leaning towards more frame rate. It just looks better. So that was also the case with a devil may cry 5 special edition. It runs in 4k 30fps um you know with ray tracing and it looks pretty good but gives me the 60fps mode. It actually has a 1080p 60fps mode with ray tracing. I opted for the 1080p 60fps mode that also still has ray tracing. There’s also a 120fps mode for faster 120hz tvs uh that was so smooth and looks really good. But you lose a lot of graphical fidelity by going for that too. There’s no ray tracing and you lose a lot of other special graphical features.
The ps5 interface looks nice and elegant. I think sony has always been great about that. It’s a chill world for you to just explore all the games on your new system. I couldn’t actually try out some of the other games coming to ps5 like the demon souls remake but i did try some existing games. So the ghost of tsushima got patched to support 60fps and 4k and it looks astounding. It also just loads much quicker than before thanks to that ssd and that’s something i saw with other older games too that weren’t even optimized for the system. So that includes horizon zero dawn and the last of us part two. I’m hoping sony goes back and gets developers to upgrade some of these older titles more because there’s a lot of hardware they can really take advantage of.
Now so it is kind of a shame that sony’s only launching with a handful of PlayStation 5 optimized games. But they’re in a better spot than Microsoft is Microsoft. One major first-party title was halo infinite and that’s delayed until next year. Still, Microsoft has the advantage when it comes to backward compatibility. The ps5 can’t play anything before the ps4s do be sure to keep those systems around.
The ps5 can also be used as a 4k blu-ray player and you know it has entertainment apps. But unfortunately, those are still in the works right now. So we can’t really talk much about them in this review so do you need to buy the ps5. At least the decisions a little easier for sony’s consoles you either get the 500 model which has the 4k blu-ray drive and everything or the 400 model which is just digital doesn’t have an optical drive compared to the Xbox series x.
The PlayStation 5 just has a stronger library of launch titles like I said but if having a wider variety of games at your fingertips. This means more to you than just the big-budget exclusives then Microsoft may have the upper hand. I really like their game pass subscription which gives you access to a rotating library of titles all of Microsoft’s first-party games. Some ea play titles and soon Bethesda games all for 15 bucks.
So overall I think with the PlayStation 5 sony has managed to deliver a truly next-generation console experience. Even if its design is a bit overcooked. Its controller is genuinely remarkable. It has enough power to play 4k games and get you to 60 fps most of the time and it actually has a decent selection of launch titles. But I won’t say sony has won the next generation war just yet. Maybe just the launch battle but here’s my big takeaway after looking at both the Xbox series x and the ps5. It doesn’t really matter if there’s a single winner. This generation these boxes are very very close in terms of overall capabilities. So gamers should just appreciate the fact that you have two strong choices that you can choose from to deliver console gaming that can really.
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