Round 4, Fight.

A while back, while this blog was still rather active, we had talked about the trickle of information we had about the up and coming new consoles, X-Box One and PS4. (Sweet Shodan that makes me feel old. And that Shodan reference makes me feel even older)

While round 3 was definitely and unequivacally won by Sony, this round may well turn out to be quite different. Both consoles are poised to release during the holiday season of 2020, but who will make the bigger splash?

First, a little brush up on how rounds 1 and 2 went.

Well, not needed really. PS2 absolutely dominated the original Xbox (despite the Xbox being the superior machine from a technical standpoint), and the Xbox 360 won over PS3 (thanks to a lot of reasons, Sony's own grave mistakes not excluded).

But round 3, yeah, that went to Sony. Hell, even round 3.5 was won by Sony, despite the Xbox One X being technologically superior to the PS4 Pro.
The reasons can more or less boil down to 2: 1) the initial backlash and loss of goodwill at the Xbox's launch mistakes, even if most of them were backtracked (you can find more details here, and 2) the libraries of the two consoles.

Oh god, the libraries. It hurts me to admit, but XBONE just totally goofed on this. While for the duration of its lifetime it tried to market some exclusives, eventually they just gave up and made everything available on other platforms (well, the PC, which ostensibly is a piece of the pie that also belongs to Microsoft thanks to Windows). Well, almost everything. Halo 5 remains an XBONE exclusive to this day.

But the PS4 kept its exclusives...well...exclusive. You wanted to play third party games like Kingdom Hears 3, Red Dead 2, Mortal Kombat X (or 11), hell, even the last FIFA or something? You had options.

But if you wanted to play Infamous, Uncharted, God of War, Gran Turismo, Spider-Man, Horizon, Ratchet and Clank and a slew of others...you had to go PS4.

I am reasonably sure I will eventually get both consoles, it's just a matter of which one I will get first. Full disclaimer, after heavily using both the PS4 Slim and the original XBONE, I gotta say, I much prefer the feel of the XBONE. Hell, same goes for 360 and PS3, and even original X-Box and PS2.

Maybe that's why I'm actually rooting for the Xbox Series X this time around.

But are those aforementioned two reasons that worked against the last gen Xbox countered this time around?

The answer is a loud, resounding...maybe?

Not really going to go into the specs of each console because, let's face it...no end user cares as much as (p)reviewers do about raw throughput, teraflops, or which console has the fastest SSD. So let's not fall into that trap.

Let's not fall into the trap of discussing design either. Yes, the Series X doesn't look sexy, and the PS5 looks maybe a bit over-designed. But we all know early launch consoles are not nessesarily the same as the console evolves to look like mid-gen.

Who wins round 4 will all boil down to 3 things:

1) Which console is the best value for money.

2) Which one will make shared games look better/faster.

3) Which one will have the most must-play exclusives.

Let's break these down.

1) Value for money, that's way up in the air at the moment.

While Sony have announced their two headliners (the PS5 and its discless counterpart), Microsoft has only announced their Xbox Series X (previously Project Scarlet). Their Project Lockhart (also known as Series S) remains under wraps at least till early July (while there are some substantial rumours we're talking about a discless, budget version of the Series X).

A recent leak seems to point not only to that, but also on it being throttled to be, specs-wise, inferior to the current One X, but evening out performance-wise as it's not aimed towards 4K resolutions.

Neither Sony or Microsoft have anounced their launch price for any console, but those same pesky rumours are saying we're looking at something in the 400 dollar ballpark for the Xbox (slashed, maybe even halved, for Lockhart), and around 450-500 for the PS5.

However, one killer feature Microsoft have up their sleeve at the moment is backwards and parallel compatibility.

This means most launch games will be playable both on the new Series X, as well as the Xbox One. Would this limit the new games from taking full advantage of the gameplay improvements they could squeeze out of the new hardware? Potentially, yes, that would result in less wow-factor games initially playable on both consoles.

But, for the end consumer, that means they can start building their library even before getting the console, buying each game just the one time. Many of these will also be playable on a Windows PC as well. Not to mention that your OG Xbox, 360 and One libraries will be playable on the new generation hardware to a very (surpringly) large extent, upscaled, HDR-ed and everything. And that's without even keeping in mind they are launching xCloud and their already existing Gamepass.

Microsoft is going for a gaming ecosystem, while Sony is going for a standalone powerhouse.

The scale is tipped towards Microsoft on this so far, but nothing is certain yet and all of this is liable to change, dramatically.

2) Which one will make games look better? We have no fucking idea on this yet, if I'm being totally honest with you. Sony says their console will win this part, Microsoft says theirs will, time will tell.

But to keep being totally honest with you, it's unlikely there's going to be a dramatic difference between the two.

3) Exclusive games/IPs: Right off the bat, this looks to be Sony's strength. They showcased a lot of continuations of their exclusive IPs, as well as some new ones. There's a new Horizon in the works, a new Spider-Man, a new Ratchet and Clank, a new Gran Turismo. And let's be honest, the staples missing right now (like God of War, Infamous, Uncharted) etc are probably not too far off.

Microsoft, on the other hand, probably doesn't have many (strictly speaking) exclusives to showcase. Their staples in the last generation have boiled down to Halo, Gears of War and Forza, and most of the games of these series have found their way to PC already.

However, they are likely to have games that simply won't be available to PS5 (such as they did this generation with Quantum Break, Ryse, and the aforementioned franchises), and the Series X (and perhaps even Lockhart) being the casual, cheaper and easier alternative to building a custom gaming PC capable of running all the new games.

I am still going to feel the scales tipped towards Sony for now on this category, but as before, all is liable to change. Xbox execs have said they "feel pretty good" after seeing Sony's PS5 reveal, which either means they have some hidden aces up their sleeve, or simply are not wanting to express just how worried they are.

One interesting (and slightly worrying for Sony) detail: games that were traditionally considered Sony's "exclusives" have slowly started finding their way in other platforms. Square Enix for example was a Sony staple: not so much anymore. Even games like Heavy Rain (and subsequent games Beyond and Detroit) have found themselves on PC.

We will know a lot more soon, so expect an update to this post :)

One last, parting thought: in the current global economic situation, I believe value for money will play a much bigger part than it did for previous generations.

If Microsoft manages to secure that win, and if Sony doesn't trip itself up (like it did when they launched PS3 for a whopping 599 dollars), the Xbox may have that launch months advantage in the bag.