The PS5 is more exciting than the Xbox Series X, for 2 simple reasons

For the past few weeks, I have been playing with my new video game machines. It can be a tricky business at times given that we as a country are also facing a devastating pandemic and a coup at the same time, but perhaps we can think of this as a stress test for the entire concept of video games: Which of these experiences can I successfully pull away from my brain enough for me to enjoy a little? It’s not the worst time to have the PS5 and Xbox Series X, to be honest.

Over the last month, I’ve probably spent more time on Series X than on PS5, mainly because that’s where I played. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which I decided to terminate for some reason: I had no screen breaks, but I did have glitches. But even despite that, the PS5 just feels more exciting, and the two reasons why are worth seeing.

The first is the Dualsense, Sony’s brilliant finale to the law of diminishing returns. For years consoles have sold themselves with better visuals even as the jumps have become less and less noticeable since the N64. So Sony decided to put that aside and focus on a few completely different senses, increasing the haptic feedback on its controller until it really felt like a new experience. I was skeptical of these claims, having heard them before, but it only took me a few minutes to leave that skepticism in the dust.

How will the Dualsense change the way we play? I doubt many games integrate it as deeply as the masterpiece it was. Astro Game Room, but first-person shooters will probably never feel the same. But that’s not what matters right now. What matters is that Sony managed to make the feeling of playing with new hardware revealing in ways I really didn’t expect, even without a dramatic visual leap.

And then the second is that old magic, the same one that allowed the PS3 to bounce back after a completely bungled launch and allowed the PS4 to continue to dominate the console market throughout the generation: gaming. I’d say it was actually a combination of three games: Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Demon souls Y Astro Game Roomthe latter of which was included with every console.

Single Miles Morales It would have been enough, but the three together ensured that the new machine had a surprisingly excellent gaming lineup that covered a wide range of experiences, allowing third parties to fill the gap. And that’s where you see the Dualsense again: Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War It was clearly not exclusive to PS5, but it only has Dualsense on PS5. And that makes it an exclusive experience within a third party game, a more impressive touch of the hand.

We’ll see what this ultimately means. Xbox has a lot of things that are exciting: Game Pass, mostly, plus what has suddenly become quite a large group of excellent developers. There’s also his approach to streaming and a cross-platform ecosystem, which I love to watch evolve.

But the main issue with Xbox right now is that while there are large parts of its strategy that are interesting, capable, and potentially could transform the gaming space, none of them are really designed to deliver that shiny new box feel to it. the same way as the PS5. But we’ve seen in the past how the launch momentum can continue for an entire generation, and there is no indication that Sony is going to slow down in 2021 with Horizon: Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarok Y Ratchet and Clank: A Rift Apart. I want to feel Aloy’s bow and Kratos’ ax on the Dualsense as well as Ratchet’s chicken launcher or whatever.

PS5 was always set to win the console war in these early moments, even without all of this. But the Dualsense and the initial release lineup means that Sony is not only building on the momentum, it is displaying real insight into a consumer electronics product that is hard to match.