Question asked last night on stream: what’s going to be the console to buy next gen?
The easy answer is “idk”. We just know so little about what Microsoft and Sony have in store for us in 2020. What if XCloud becomes the best way to play games? What if Google Stadia is so successful that it makes home consoles obsolete? What if Nintendo makes a surprise announcement and announces a new console at E3 2020? What if Sony decided “hey, we’ve just been owning Microsoft for the last 7 years, maybe we should slow down a bit”? We just don’t know enough about what the future holds.
So let’s ride with what we do know. We know that Project Scarlet and the PS5 are going to be fucking workhorses. Both companies have already thrown specs out that lead us to believe that home consoles are finally going to compete with gaming PCs on a power level standpoint. But, as is the case with presidential elections, everything being said right now needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Microsoft and Sony are building up hype right now for one sole purpose: sales. They may both debut their consoles that are only a slight upgrade over the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro, with plans to upgrade the software over time. I absolutely expect these consoles to be able to run at 60 fps on 8K displays at some point, but considering that 8K displays are extremely expensive and rare right now, I don’t think we’ll see full capability realized until late 2021. So why even buy the next gen yet? I’ll tell ya why…
For some reason, it has become acceptable in the industry to make games that are too advanced for current gen consoles. Take Control for example. I’ve done some research, and I’ve discovered that even the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro struggle to keep up with Remedy’s latest release. Only gaming PCs are running seamlessly with no rendering or frame dropping. Why in the fuck is this acceptable? If you’re not going to downgrade your game for home consoles, why even release it for them? Unfortunately, I think this trend is going to continue. Game developers seem to be a year ahead of consoles, with mammoths like Death Stranding, Cyberpun 2077, and Watch Dogs Legion all being released prior to the next generation of consoles. I do not expect these games to run smoothly at all, until they are played on Scarlett and PS5. That being said, as the video described above, both consoles seem identical from a hardware standpoint. So does it really matter which one you choose? Yes.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from Microsoft current the current generation, its that they have no fucking clue how to make games anymore. Halo 5 was good, Gears 4 was bad, and no other triple A exclusive in the last 7 years has been worth playing. Hell, the only other exclusives that have mattered are Cuphead and Ori and the Blind Forest. But do you know who does care about their games? Sony. Sony is the king right now, and I don’t expect that to change in 2020 just because Microsoft is launching with Halo Infinite. PlayStation is getting Ghosts of Tsushima, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, probably a God of War sequel, and most importantly The Last of Us Part II all in 2020-2021. I personally am going to end up purchasing both consoles for this reason alone. I’m not like many of my friends who can grind one or two competitive games for years. I like the narrative based games, and no one is doing that better than Sony right now.
So unless we see something groundbreaking from Microsoft in the next 12 months, be on the lookout for the PS5 release date.
