A difficult choice between consoles

[Kasenumi]

Hi

I want to buy one of the consoles, either Playstation 5 or Xbox Series X. Currently I can afford only one of them and want to make a good choice without having any regrets later.

I have never had a console before and thought it might be a cheaper solution for gaming. Both consoles have game passes.

Currently I don't have much time for gaming so I thought I rather buy a console than purchase new GPU, PSU, CPU, RAM, MOBO etc, currently those cost a lot. Besides console gaming allows buying a subscription with unlimited access to games library which seems cheaper than buying games which I don't "own" anyway. 

How did you choose your console and do you have any regrets choosing it over another options? 

 

A few more details:

- I have a 1440p 27' monitor which I currently use with my gaming PC. Might be used for console gaming.

- 4k HDR tv with SONY sound system, 5.1, Dolby Atmos, SONY Soundbar and SONY subwoofer. Might use for console gaming as well. I don't know if it will be in some way synchronized with SONY Playstation 5. 

- I prefer wired hardware, including controller. Even if it would be a 5m+ wire. Just don't like charging the battery.

The possibility to use keyboard and mouse on console seems great for me as I have always played on keyboard and mouse.

-I always ignored any information about console exclusives. No spoilers or YouTube walkthroughs before I have an opportunity to play the game.

And I know consoles have some impressive exclusives many people seem to like. Uncharted or The last of us for example. And many more.

 

Thank you for your time and help 

-----------------------------------

UPD 1 month later: 

Bought Xbox Series X. Playing with Dolby Atmos, HDR 4k 60 FPS and great graphics, no FPS drops. If there are any minor differences between PC and console graphics I don't notice them, as I am sitting 2.5 - 3 meters from 55' TV, graphics and performance look and feel great.

Pad gives some extra possibilities than keyboard (like manually controlling car speed, it feels more like driving a real car ), pad vibrations also offer some incredible immersion, and once you get used to pad after a few days it generally feels very relaxing. 

The choice is made and I am satisfied with the decision.

Thanks everyone who gave me advices

 

[TylerD321]

There are a few things to consider when choosing a console, let me list them.

• What console do most of your friends play on if they play on console?
• Which controller do you prefer?
• Which console does your current hardware (controller and/or headset) work best with?

Honestly, since you have a PC already, I would get a PS5 if your hardware works with it. You can play a lot of the gamepass games on PC so really you would have access to the widest range of games across the 3 platforms.

 

Here are a list of games you can play with keyboard and mouse on both consoles:

https://www.purexbox.com/guides/all-xbox-games-with-mouse-and-keyboard-support

https://gamesbustop.com/ps5-games-that-supports-keyboard-and-mouse/

 

Personally, if you prefer mouse and keyboard, I would just upgrade your processor and keep the rest of your PC the same. Then, use the money you saved by not buying a console to buy whatever games you want to buy during steam summer & winter sales. I really hate controller gaming myself and the only game I use my controller with is Elden Ring. The only reason I would ever consider owning a console is to play Madden. There really is no benefit to switching to console with your current PC specs unless there a specific console exclusives you wish to play or games without crossplatform that you want to play with friends.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dZcPGL

[king_thenorth]

5 hours ago, Kasenumi said:

Both consoles have game passes.

-I always ignored any information about console exclusives. No spoilers or YouTube walkthroughs before I have an opportunity to play the game.

And I know consoles have some impressive exclusives many people seem to like. Uncharted or The last of us for example. And many more.

As someone who owns both a ps5 and xbox series x, this is false. If you buy the highest price version of PS plus, you get a gamepass of sorts. But it does not include all the newest games, it uses cloud streaming for half of the catalog as they are ps3 games. Gamepass is xbox exclusive, and is $15 a month for the Gold, pc gamepass, console gamepass, and xcloud. The bigger question is what do you want to play, if you want to play the newest ps5 exclusives, you need a ps5, but will have to pay $70 for every game you want to play. If you just want to play most of the newest games on release, you should get an xbox with gamepass. Also, most ps4 and ps5 exclusives are coming to pc. Uncharted, god of war, horizon, spiderman, and just this week sackboy a big adventure launched. So if you are okay waiting between 3 month and 2 years for the game, sony exlusives are coming to the pc regularly, and usually so far a little cheaper

5 hours ago, Kasenumi said:

- I prefer wired hardware, including controller. Even if it would be a 5m+ wire. Just don't like charging the battery.

The possibility to use keyboard and mouse on console seems great for me as I have always played on keyboard and mouse.

If you really want to use a wired controller all the time, you will either want to remove the battery from the ps5 so you do not have battery issues there, or just go xbox as since the controllers use AA batteries, you won't risk having the issues with having a built in battery and having the controller constantly plugged in. Also, just go and find a place to try both controllers. For the Xbox you can get a usb device that will allow any controller to work on it, for the ps5 you have to use a dualsense controller. I prefer asymetric sticks, the switch/gamecube/xbox style layouts and so dislike this part of the ps5 controller.

 

5 hours ago, Kasenumi said:

- I have a 1440p 27' monitor which I currently use with my gaming PC. Might be used for console gaming.

- 4k HDR tv with SONY sound system, 5.1, Dolby Atmos, SONY Soundbar and SONY subwoofer. Might use for console gaming as well. I don't know if it will be in some way synchronized with SONY Playstation 5.

If you want good 1440p support, ps5 just recently updated to sometimes work with 1440p displays, but locked at 60hz max with no hdr and sometimes chroma subsampling, so instead of full rgb aka 4:4:4, it is 4:2:0. Xbox has far better support for this resolution, with ful hdr and 120hz support and no chroma subsampling, 4:4:4 or full rgb just like a computer. When playing on a 4k tv, what brand is the tv, and more specifically what is the model? if it is not the newest Samsung or and LG CX or newer oled from lg you will lots of time have wierd hdmi 2.1 issues. If it is a sony, you can unlock a dolby vision like mode if it is from this year or last year, but the xbox supports true dolby vision and atmos in the console for all games and apps. If picture quality is important, xbox offers more options for both video and sound output and has better media support in most apps, including playing cds (which the ps5 can't do for some reason) and supporting more than 1080p h.264 files at 5mbps in plex (the max supported on all playstation hardware, and the ps5 does not support h.265 video at all as far as I can tell in different apps). 4k 120hz is also very different, with the ps5 outputting only hdr10, with chroma sub sampling of 4:2:0 at 10 bits. The xbox supports 4k 120hz hdr10 with 10 bit 4:4:4 chroma sub sampling, and 4k 120hz dolby vision with 12 bit 4:2:2 chroma sub sampling.

 

Personally, I prefer my pc to both of these, but if I am playing on my tv, I prefer the xbox: it supports most of my old disk og xbox, and xbox 360 games as well as 100% of the my xbox one games, and usually has auto upgrades running many of them at 120hz since it is far more powerful, plus a lot of games that are in gamespass i play on my pc the save carries over to the xbox so I can jump from the pc to the xbox and use the same savefile. The ps5 is only used to play sony games that I don't want to wait to come to pc. So in the last year, I have only bought horizon forbidden west and that is it, i will probably buy ragnarok, but I don't like preordering games. I will say, if you get either console and plan to make it you main console, you will have to get more storage. I was looking at file sizes for the newest call of duty just to see what the size was, and it would take up about 2/3 of the space on a stock ps5 once the new warzone is out, needing ~350gbs of space. So you will need more storage, so a 2tb nvme ssd that is rated for the ps5 in speed, which you can find onthe sony website what the requirements are, but a 2tb ssd will cost ~$250 for one the will allow you to install ps5 games to the extra drive. for the xbox, you have to get their segate drives, except that the community has found ways around that which you can find by searching reddit and hackaday for the info.

 

[SteveGrabowski0]

Series X wouldn't make any sense to get since you basically have one with your gaming PC already. Plus PC Game Pass is $5 a month cheaper than XBox Game Pass Ultimate. And XBox exclusives are usually on PC day 1 anyways. Question should probably be if you want to get a PS5 or not. If you want to play God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, Ghost of Tsushima, Demon's Souls Remake, The Last of Us Parts 1 & 2, and/or Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart soon then get the PS5. If not most of those games should be on PC within the next year or two other than God of War Ragnarok, that might take a little longer to port to PC. In the past PC + Playstation was a great combo to have but now that Sony is porting their games to PC after a time delay it's not a must to get a Playstation if you're a patient gamer.

 

EDIT: If you're in the US the PS5 Modern Warfare II bundle is in stock right now, direct from Sony

 

https://direct.playstation.com/en-us/hardware/ps5

[Mavrick2k]

This just echos some of the other posters but firstly on games.  The best selection in catalog and for new releases for a subscription is going to be on game pass.  

For hardware upgrading your pc with the 500 it costs for a series X should do you well.  If you want to go Console for portability or what not then I would still stay Xbox.  I have a gaming PC and a series X with Game Pass Ultimate.  My son had both xbox and playstation and now the playstation just collects dust most of the time.  With Game pass you get all the day one releases already with your subscription.  The only game I have bought to play in last 3 years not on game pass was AC Valhalla.

[bezza...]

you can alwayus upgrade the pc

[Kasenumi]

1 hour ago, Mavrick2k said:

This just echos some of the other posters but firstly on games.  The best selection in catalog and for new releases for a subscription is going to be on game pass.  

For hardware upgrading your pc with the 500 it costs for a series X should do you well.  If you want to go Console for portability or what not then I would still stay Xbox.  I have a gaming PC and a series X with Game Pass Ultimate.  My son had both xbox and playstation and now the playstation just collects dust most of the time.  With Game pass you get all the day one releases already with your subscription.  The only game I have bought to play in last 3 years not on game pass was AC Valhalla.

 Speaking about Xbox game pass ultimate. 

Do you also have access to DLCs? Or only the base game and DLC have to be purchased to have access to them?

For example my gf likes to play SIMS4 most of the time, I just don't see myself paying for all those expansions once again.

 

[SteveGrabowski0]

2 hours ago, Kasenumi said:

 Speaking about Xbox game pass ultimate. 

Do you also have access to DLCs? Or only the base game and DLC have to be purchased to have access to them?

For example my gf likes to play SIMS4 most of the time, I just don't see myself paying for all those expansions once again.

 

Nah it's base games usually.

[Mavrick2k]

Some games which sims4 is one of them have the expansion packs as well.  Best you can do is sign up for game pass ultimate trial.  $1 for the first month.  You can browse all the games and expansions.  Try it out on your PC.  You can see what games there are for xbox.  You can cloud play xbox titles.  Best way to find out if that is what you want.  If not then cancel before the month is out.  Only out $1.

[Voytek85]

I'm going to give you my PERSONAL opinion.

 

I would go Series X hands down. 

I own both systems and bought the PS5 hoping I would be able to play a ton of cool exclusives, however it has been almost 2 years since the release and not a lot out there is exclusive. The only game that is a true PS5 exclusive in my opinion is Ratchet and Clank, which was amazing btw.

Other games like GT7 are quite disappointing to me. Since they also develop these to run on the PS4, it never reaches the full potential of a PS5. Basically most new games are a PS4 game that have a PS5 patch with higher framerate and some better lighting or whatever.

 

They revamped the PS subscription because of gamepass. I have the PSN subscription and the games that I got monthly were just poor. Not a single amazing title really while on the Xbox, gamepass gives you A LOT better value, even more if you have or ever will get a gamepc. It also allows you to cloudplay triple A games on your phone or tablet and it works surprisingly well.

 

The PS has some excellent games in its library though but for me it was The Last of Us, probably one of the best games I ever played, but in general the Xbox package just is better value imho. Online play is also just better with the discord integrations they have now. Sony did catch up a lot since the PS3 but the online experience on Xbox is still the best out there from my experience. Basically, it comes down to what games you like but I feel the Xbox has the better deal. 

Xbox 360 > PS3

Xbox One < PS4
Series X > PS5

 

my 2 cents

[centurion_08]

On 10/29/2022 at 9:29 PM, Kasenumi said:

Hi

I want to buy one of the consoles, either Playstation 5 or Xbox Series X. Currently I can afford only one of them and want to make a good choice without having any regrets later.

I have never had a console before and thought it might be a cheaper solution for gaming. Both consoles have game passes.

Currently I don't have much time for gaming so I thought I rather buy a console than purchase new GPU, PSU, CPU, RAM, MOBO etc, currently those cost a lot. Besides console gaming allows buying a subscription with unlimited access to games library which seems cheaper than buying games which I don't "own" anyway. 

How did you choose your console and do you have any regrets choosing it over another options? 

 

A few more details:

- I have a 1440p 27' monitor which I currently use with my gaming PC. Might be used for console gaming.

- 4k HDR tv with SONY sound system, 5.1, Dolby Atmos, SONY Soundbar and SONY subwoofer. Might use for console gaming as well. I don't know if it will be in some way synchronized with SONY Playstation 5. 

- I prefer wired hardware, including controller. Even if it would be a 5m+ wire. Just don't like charging the battery.

The possibility to use keyboard and mouse on console seems great for me as I have always played on keyboard and mouse.

-I always ignored any information about console exclusives. No spoilers or YouTube walkthroughs before I have an opportunity to play the game.

And I know consoles have some impressive exclusives many people seem to like. Uncharted or The last of us for example. And many more.

 

Thank you for your time and help 

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure, why the hustle. Your PC makes circles both in performace and games accesibility. Taking into acc all the emulators and the fact Sony will release all of their future games on pc you seem to have the best platform to play video games. And no, i'm not a pc fanboy of any sorts.

[TylerD321]

10 hours ago, centurion_08 said:

I'm not sure, why the hustle. Your PC makes circles both in performace and games accesibility. Taking into acc all the emulators and the fact Sony will release all of their future games on pc you seem to have the best platform to play video games. And no, i'm not a pc fanboy of any sorts.

This is why I stand by my statement that the only reason to own a console if you already have a good PC is to play sports games such as Madden that do not look good on pc or allow cross platform.

[Spencerssy1]

short answer go PS5

okay so me experience and recommendation. so... I would recommend ps5. here is my logic

If you asking the question, you must not have an online friend group yet because, they would tell you which console to buy for in chat in game. so if you don't have that group yet. I would recommend to start with fun single player games and arguably the ps5 had and has the best ps4 and ps5 exclusive single player games. If you are not a story game player. I still recommend ps5 it is a far more stable, reliable, gaming experience.

some exceptions would be if Xbox game pass interests you, friends that have xbox to chat with, if you have any previous gen xbox games, or if the play station controller bugs you (some people don't like the analog sticks side by side)

full transparence I own full AMD PC, Xbox series S, and PS5, PS4, Xbox 360, ect...... so I have some experience. DON'T buy the Xbox Series S bad glitchy crashing experience.

[steelo]

On 10/29/2022 at 3:55 PM, TylerD321 said:

There are a few things to consider when choosing a console, let me list them.

• What console do most of your friends play on if they play on console?
• Which controller do you prefer?
• Which console does your current hardware (controller and/or headset) work best with?

Honestly, since you have a PC already, I would get a PS5 if your hardware works with it. You can play a lot of the gamepass games on PC so really you would have access to the widest range of games across the 3 platforms.

 

Here are a list of games you can play with keyboard and mouse on both consoles:

https://www.purexbox.com/guides/all-xbox-games-with-mouse-and-keyboard-support

https://gamesbustop.com/ps5-games-that-supports-keyboard-and-mouse/

 

Personally, if you prefer mouse and keyboard, I would just upgrade your processor and keep the rest of your PC the same. Then, use the money you saved by not buying a console to buy whatever games you want to buy during steam summer & winter sales. I really hate controller gaming myself and the only game I use my controller with is Elden Ring. The only reason I would ever consider owning a console is to play Madden. There really is no benefit to switching to console with your current PC specs unless there a specific console exclusives you wish to play or games without crossplatform that you want to play with friends.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dZcPGL

I know I'm late to the party, but I completely agree. Most "PS5 vs XBOX" reviews I've read state it's a 'bonus' to be able to play the same game on PC or XBOX. Why??? If I have a PC that can already play it, why do I need an XBOX? Makes no sense, at least to me...

 

I'm not a fanboy of either console...I'd be 100% content with either. I think the decision comes down to which games you want to play (Microsoft xbox/PC titles versus Playstation only titles) Personally, I'm leaning towards a PS5 because I love the 'God of War' series and 'Ghost of Tsushima' looks freaking awesome. I play games like Madden and Witcher which should be available on either platform. Also, I have a (relatively) decent PC that is about 2 years old that can play most Microsoft games at respectable settings.

[Kasenumi]

UPDATE after 3 months:

3 months after buying Xbox Series X I also bought PS5.

2 top consoles together still are cheaper than new GPU.

Console gaming feels so much more relaxing than PC gaming. My PC wasn't turned on for over 2 months and will be used for older PC exclusive games if I ever feel nostalgic.

If a game supports Dual Sense pad features - buy it on PS5, you will love the experience.

If I would have to choose NOW I'd pick PS5 because of exclusives and Dual Sense pad.

DO NOT choose a console because of advertised game pass/PS Plus - games may come and go any moment. 

Xbox still needs to have more exclusives and  release their own next gen pad. There is a reason their console is currently cheaper.

 

 

[TylerD321]

4 hours ago, Kasenumi said:

UPDATE after 3 months:

3 months after buying Xbox Series X I also bought PS5.

2 top consoles together still are cheaper than new GPU.

Console gaming feels so much more relaxing than PC gaming. My PC wasn't turned on for over 2 months and will be used for older PC exclusive games if I ever feel nostalgic.

If a game supports Dual Sense pad features - buy it on PS5, you will love the experience.

If I would have to choose NOW I'd pick PS5 because of exclusives and Dual Sense pad.

DO NOT choose a console because of advertised game pass/PS Plus - games may come and go any moment. 

Xbox still needs to have more exclusives and  release their own next gen pad. There is a reason their console is currently cheaper.

 

 

At that point you could’ve just bought a dual sense controller and used it on your perfectly capable computer and never bought a console or upgraded pc.