I could have gotten a Series X this morning. It was available locally via Target. I’m a gamer and as former press I end up buying gaming things I don’t often need because I love this hobby. I was a little excited to see it in stock.
I decided to look at what games I could get that are Series X specific and all the air went out of the balloon. It’s more than two months from release and all that’s there is upscaled stuff from the prior gen and 3rd party games I either already own or don’t have any interest in playing.
Somewhere down the road this will probably be overcome, but even with Game Pass it just isn’t worth me buying one now. If I didn’t have the PS5 and gave up on a 3080 in my PC, then sure the value is there. I felt better letting someone else have that Series X today and likely will for months to come. This machine just plain has a games problem.
I agree that getting a Series X if you already have a PS5 doesn’t make sense right now. I passed on getting PS5 for similar reason. Right now the Switch just has a much more appealing exclusive lineup, so that makes much more sense as a second console. And then a PS5/Series X down the line once the exclusive lineup is stronger.
It’s all in your perspective and how you choose to frame the discussion. I’ve looked at the games available on the PS5 and Switch and they don’t seem compelling enough for me to shell out for them. Do I think they have a games problem? No, that would be stupid to say. But I’ve got more stuff to play than I have hours in the day already and any other games on any other platforms would just get thrown on the pile.
Series X|S has the first truly new, full, next-gen-only game coming out this coming week, The Medium. There haven’t been any games that I’m aware of for either new platform that haven’t been also available on the last gen, a pack-in demo, or a remake of a 10 year old game. Go MS!
Well me and Dave were specifically addressing a second console. Obviously I agree as a first console the Series X is the best for me right now because of game pass and my own Xbox backlog.
Sure, but I would think at the core of that question is “why buy an Xbox?”, which is going to have a lot of different answers, not least of which being “I don’t need one.” And they’re all fair.
Dammit. I knew there was something! Godfall ftw! (that’s the only time anyone, anywhere has ever said that, I’m sure).
And really, are those big caveats? Seems to me that they are pretty basic. Neither console has had anything really next-gen-only yet. Demon’s Souls looks great, but its a remake-I played it a decade ago. Astro is a short tech demo, basically. Yeah, covid, etc. but it’s honestly kind of unbelievable to me that both companies managed to launch new consoles they’ve had in the works for years with nothing new for them.
I mean, they are dong cross release for stuff but there was new stuff. PS5 also had Sackboy and Spider-Man:Miles Morales and yes there are PS4 versions but they do look and run much improved on PS5 beyond simple resolution. Miles particularly looks very good with the raytracing modes. MS is the one that really stumbled there though as they had no first party games at all this fall, not even new crossgen ones, though I guess you could maybe count Gears Tactics which came out on PC in the spring and consoles in the fall.
Microsoft’s biggest game release of the year was in the summer and was PC only, oddly enough. Flight Simulator if you couldn’t figure that out.
But hey, The Medium in a couple of days! To be honest, I don’t have high hopes. But as mentioned, it’s on GP, so there’s literally no reason to not r try it out. Speaking of, I see I can preload it…
That’s cool. The Show is maybe the best sports game on any console. I love the show but I’m not 20 years old, and in theory you could play this for something like infinite hours in career modes, so I can’t just devote enough time to it.
Still, it doesn’t look like it will require that much work to be running well at 1080p on the XSS. The best thing about the current architecture is that the CPU power on both Xbox models is practically the same. Scaling graphical effects is a lot easier than scaling gameplay.
