The next generation of game consoles came into sharper focus this week as Sony officially announced the launch date and price for the PlayStation 5 during its showcase at the Penny Arcade Expo Online. The PS5 will ship Nov. 12 in two versions: a Digital Edition without an optical disc drive for $399.99; and a standard version, where the disc drive sticks out of the unit’s side like the PS5 ate too much at dinner, for $499.99.
This sets up this year’s holiday season as the first stage in the ninth-generation console war, with Microsoft’s Xbox Series X/S planned to ship two days earlier on November 10.
Now that we know most of the details about both the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X, the tale of the tape says that, on a hardware level, the two systems are very similar. Both run on solid-state drives; both feature a big leap in processing power and overall speed from the previous generation’s hardware; and both have a robust lineup of first-party games to choose from. As of now, they both even have a cheaper all-digital option for thrifty early adopters.
One big difference, though, comes from the changes between versions of the hardware. As per current writeups, such as Engadget’s, the digital edition of the PlayStation 5 is simply the normal PS5 without a disc drive, full stop. Under the hood, the digital PS5 has identical performance to the non-digital version.
Conversely, you do take a hit on performance if you opt for the Xbox Series S over the Series X. The Xbox Series S has 6 GB less RAM, a slightly slower CPU (3.6 Ghz to the XSX’s 3.8 Ghz), and a 512 GB version of the Series X’s 1 TB Gen 4 SSD. Most crucially, the Series S’s output resolution maxes out at 1440p, vs. the Series X’s 4K resolution.
It was always obvious from context that Microsoft’s goal with the Xbox Series S was to target a more casual audience than the Series X would attract, but before last week, a big unanswered question was what an Xbox consumer was exchanging for that deep discount on the Xbox Series S. Many players may not even notice the lesser performance, depending on what games they play with their Xboxes, but power users, professionals, and streamers will see and feel the difference. More importantly, if you’re trying to play video games on a budget in 2020, let’s be real: you aren’t buying a new console in the first place.
For the primary versions of both consoles, the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5 are coming out at almost the same time, and retailing for roughly the same initial price. The PS5 has a 3D audio engine, easily-expandable storage, and was designed with an emphasis on fast data access, but the XSX has an edge on frame rate, display resolution, and overall horsepower. On sheer stats, the distinction is academic, which means this generation comes down to the same factors as the last two: each console’s attached games and services, as well as what a consumer is actually getting for that initial price tag.
Is Sony’s victory a foregone conclusion? It seems to think so.
Sony is starting off the PlayStation 5 generation of hardware with a commanding overall lead over its primary competitors. The PS4 has sold 110.4 million units worldwide as of May of 2020, as per Sony’s own reports, which makes it the fourth best-selling console of all time. This is around nine times what Nintendo’s briefly-competitive Wii-U sold, and over twice the estimated lifetime sales to date of the Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. The PlayStation 4 installed base is a little bit more than both its primary competitors put together.
As such, Sony clearly doesn’t feel any particular need to change what it’s doing, or even to try to defend its advantage. Its marketing strategy for the PS5 until now has largely been to let the pot keep boiling on its own, maintaining a strange radio silence for much of the last year that was only broken by the occasional major pre-recorded presentation. Even the PAX Online event was just an unnamed showcase until late last week, with no hint to outsiders as to what its content would actually be.
The initial MSRP for the two versions of the PS5 is roughly in line with what industry analysts expected for the PS5, which represents a large leap forward in hardware capacity from the PS4. At $500, the standard-edition PS5 is the second most expensive PlayStation on launch, after the $600 Sony was asking for a 60-GB PlayStation 3 back in 2006, but it’s a big enough jump in horsepower between generations that you can see where the price tag’s coming from.
It’s still a risky gamble. Microsoft’s strategy with the Series X/S seems to be to almost give it away, relying on its array of services and subscriptions to keep the overall project in the black, which seems like an overall smarter play during the economic/environmental/pandemic disaster turducken that is 2020.
For Sony, conversely, it’s business as usual. The way that its showcase at PAX was structured seems to emphasize its overall strategy: it debuted a wide array of new, upcoming, and exclusive games, then threw in the PS5’s launch date and initial price at the end like they were afterthoughts. It’s using the games to move the hardware, rather than Microsoft’s current strategy where its console’s overall “ecosystem” is as important or more so than the games themselves.
This wouldn’t be a viable plan if Sony wasn’t sitting on an impressive line-up of first-party titles and exclusives. Today’s showcase featured the world premiere of Final Fantasy XVI, the latest in Square Enix’s enormously popular line of Japanese role-playing games, and a PlayStation 5 exclusive. Back in 1997, the exclusivity of Final Fantasy VII was arguably what put the original PlayStation on the map and started Sony on this ride; now, it’s clearly hoping history will repeat itself, and it’s probably not entirely wrong. Final Fantasy isn’t the juggernaut it once was, but it’s still a big name.
Other major PS5 exclusives include Spider-Man: Miles Morales, a sequel to the 2018 PS4 open-world game Spider-Man, set a year later and following Miles as he works to defend his new neighborhood of Harlem; a special edition of the 2019 hit Devil May Cry V, available digitally at system launch, which lets you play as Dante’s brother Vergil; and a remake of the notoriously difficult Demon’s Souls, the game that started a whole trend of murderously-tough-but-fair action games.
Non-exclusive games announced at Sony’s showcase included a release date for Arkane Studios’ Deathloop, a grindhouse-styled action game from the makers of the popular Dishonored series. It will be console-exclusive on the PS5 on its launch in Q2 2021, but will still receive a PC version. Avalanche Software, based in Salt Lake City, showed the first trailer for its long-awaited Harry Potter game, an open-world RPG called Hogwarts Legacy. It’s planned for a 2021 debut on PS4, PS5, XB1, XSX, and PC.
Sony also teased one major upcoming title right at the end of the show, with the ominous phrase “Ragnarok is Coming,” accompanied by the characteristic Omega-symbol logo of the fan-favorite God of War series. The last game, 2018’s award-winning God of War, ended on a cliffhanger, and apparently, that story is planned to continue at some point in 2021. God of War‘s protagonist Kratos is one of the primary faces of the overall PlayStation brand, if not the face, and bringing him back for another bloody rampage through some poor ancient culture’s mythology is a nearly guaranteed system-seller for Sony.
In some ways, you can label all of this as a cynical move by Sony. It has enjoyed a position of overall dominance in the eighth console generation. The PS4 got off to a rocky start, with a lineup that was mostly made up of ports, remasters, and the occasional bit of shovelware, but Sony eventually pulled it together and developed one of the stronger lineups of first-party software in console history. With this year’s exclusive hits The Last of Us Part II and the Bellevue, Wash.-developed Ghost of Tsushima, Sony’s letting the PS4 go out strong… and using that track record as a wordless argument on behalf of the PS5.
“You know you want these games we make,” Sony appears to be saying, “and you know you’ll pay whatever we ask for them.”
However, it did try this once before, back in the seventh console generation. Sony tried to let the PlayStation 2’s near-total market dominance carry it to victory, then sticker-shocked the world with the launch price on the PS3 … and spent most of the next few years scrambling to make up the loss against the cheaper and easier-to-use Xbox 360. The question is now whether Sony’s once again setting itself up for a costly fall, or if it’s finally built up a strong enough reputation for overall success that it actually can charge whatever it wants, regardless of economic context, for a new PlayStation. Microsoft’s gambling that it’ll be the former.
GameStop announced Wednesday afternoon that it is now taking pre-orders for both versions of the PlayStation 5. Pre-orders for the Xbox Series X will officially become available at 8 a.m. on Sept. 22.
