The PS5 and Xbox Series X/S thread

But the graphics is 90% of what your console is processing, as long as it's still playable at 30fps 1080, then the old Xbone should be able to keep up.

I think we are a couple of years away. They still support the 360 to some extent, in that you can update and purchase things on it.

Nobody's making new games for it, though. While you'll probably still be able to buy games on the Xbox One for a while, eventually the focus is going to be on the new generation. Maybe give it eight months to a year for everything currently in development to finish up and release (with the cross-generation support on both the new Xbox and Playstation machines, there's no real incentive to redo everything if you're close to the finish line), and I think we'll have only new-gen exclusives.

Sony suggested that cross-gen games were going to be a thing on PS4/5 for three years, so that seems like a reasonable gauge here.

Nobody's making new games for it, though. While you'll probably still be able to buy games on the Xbox One for a while, eventually the focus is going to be on the new generation. Maybe give it eight months to a year for everything currently in development to finish up and release (with the cross-generation support on both the new Xbox and Playstation machines, there's no real incentive to redo everything if you're close to the finish line), and I think we'll have only new-gen exclusives.

I doubt it. This isn't really a generational switch like before. Series X is a white elephant for Gamepass. As long as Gamepass subs stay high on One and One X then you'll see previous gen versions of games (and PC versions that run on various types of hardware). This will be an incredibly slow generational transition more akin to a new Samsung phone or something. For enthusiasts, of course, sooner or later Sony or MS will produce a true next gen title that isn't playable on last gen hardware but that's years away. Look at Cyberpunk for the timescales for that sort of effort. And the likelyhood is it'll probably be playable on PC anyway (or xCloud).

The first enthusiast reason to upgrade will probably be a AAAA PS5 only title from one of Sony's top studios not available on PS4. Something Last of Us, Uncharted or God of War class. I can only see Ratchet and Clank on the radar as the first shot at this but I assume we're talking 2 or 3 years before there's a huge title of note.

Also having had a check it would appear at least some games came out for the Xbox 360 in 2018 and 2019! That may sound crazy, but my mate was still playing Fifa on the 360 till March this year, his 360 packed in and unable to get a new one we finally managed to talk him into getting the Xbox One S so he could join us in our Lockdown gaming. So there was obviously enough people like him that the occasional sports game etc was still being thrown out.

I can't see Xbox One support ending in a major way in at least 3 years - I didn't get an Xbox One for at least a year as my first Xbox One achievement was December 2014, and I actively wanted one of those consoles, if they cut support off they lose my subscription. Will there be exclusives yes, but I still think you are going to see this as the most bridged/crossed over generations, especially with factoring in the Switch.

I've had an email from Currys saying my PS5 has been delayed until next year, and on the Currys website it says my order has been dispatched.

I don't know which side will win, BUT BY GOLLY IT'S TENSE.

The email won. :(

Woman on the phone told me they sold out at 4am. Nice of them to take 500 quid out of my account at 8am for their 'official launch' despite having none in stock before the launch started.

Go down there, grab yourself a washing machine and just point out they can have it back once your console arrives.

I genuinely didn't realise Currys sold games consoles. I guess the Series X does look a bit like a fridge.

I genuinely didn't realise Currys sold games consoles.

Based on my experience, I'm not sure they do.

I guess the Series X does look a bit like a fridge.

Microsoft agrees with you on that.

What the hell.

I genuinely didn't realise Currys sold games consoles. I guess the Series X does look a bit like a fridge.

I prefer the look of the Series X over the others, bit tired of consoles looking fucking ridiculous. I won't be getting either for a few years yet and unless FFXIV and Persona appear on Xbox I'm likely to go for a PS5, but unless a redesign drastically changes its appearance I'm going to be looking for a way to hide the damned thing.

I got both my PS3 and 4 from Curry’s.

Are they not all Currys/PCWorld now?

I prefer the look of the Series X over the others, bit tired of consoles looking fucking ridiculous. I won't be getting either for a few years yet and unless FFXIV and Persona appear on Xbox I'm likely to go for a PS5, but unless a redesign drastically changes its appearance I'm going to be looking for a way to hide the damned thing.

I’m fairly sure they’ve announced or at least heavily hinted that FFXIV is coming to Xbox. No idea about Persona but in a world where Yakuza can make the jump, anything is possible.

Are they not all Currys/PCWorld now?

With Carphone Warehouse concessions, no less. A veritable bonanza of all the tat you don't need in one place.

CAN I HELP YOU

Don't make me tell you about the time I bought my 4K TV and the guy was absolutely resolute about me also needing to spend £80 on a gold plated HDMI cable. I had to really bite my tongue.

Did you buy two?

One for each eyeball, obviously.

I'm fed up now. Stock shortages suck. I just want to go into a shop and get a Series X (no way I'm risking Amazon, based on the horror stories there). Payday is tomorrow. Gah.

I prefer the look of the Series X over the others, bit tired of consoles looking fucking ridiculous. I won't be getting either for a few years yet and unless FFXIV and Persona appear on Xbox I'm likely to go for a PS5, but unless a redesign drastically changes its appearance I'm going to be looking for a way to hide the damned thing.

I’m fairly sure they’ve announced or at least heavily hinted that FFXIV is coming to Xbox. No idea about Persona but in a world where Yakuza can make the jump, anything is possible.

Theres been talk for years about FFXIV going to XBox but everything I've ever heard is the sub to Live is the stumbling block, you don't (currently) need PS+ to play XIV or indeed any F2P games like you do with XBox Live

I'd been assuming you were all talking about Final Fantasy XVI (the upcoming single-player one), not XIV.

I'm fed up now. Stock shortages suck. I just want to go into a shop and get a Series X (no way I'm risking Amazon, based on the horror stories there). Payday is tomorrow. Gah.

Anecdotal of course but I ordered my Series X from Amazon and it arrived on launch day without incident.

PS5 is here! First impressions:

• It's huge. Even the memes didn't prepare me. I've hidden it behind my 50-inch TV, and it's only just hidden.

• The backwards compatibility is so much more comprehensive than I was expecting. Every game I own is there, most have PS5 upgrades, and those that don't still run brilliantly. Sony should have bigged this up more.

• The new UI is a breath of fresh air after my increasingly slow PS4.

• PS Collection is great, and laid out well, but obviously not a substitute for Game Pass.

• The disc drive is LOUD when you're installing games. Louder than PS4. Hopefully this is just for the install phase, which was louder on PS4 as well.

• The pad. Oh lord the pad. It's beautiful.

• Downloads are super fast. Which is weird, because you'd think the PS5 would share servers with the PS4. Maybe they've given the new console priority, or something.

Downloads are faster on the Series X as well. I assume the downloads are actually some mixture of actual data coming down the pipe, and decompression, and the new machines with their better CPUs can decompress stuff much quicker. Plus writing to an SSD rather than a mechanical drive, of course.

Okay I know people more eloquent than me have already had their say, but holy crap this pad. The haptics can do rain and hail hitting an umbrella, and they both feel different. It's a bloody marvel, and definitely the best haptics I've ever seen (felt) in a device.

AstroBot is a reliable joy; some of the references to Playstation's past are wonderful. And loading Miles Morales up in seven seconds will never get old.

This definitely feels like a bigger leap than PS2 > PS3, and PS3 > PS4.

Okay I know people more eloquent than me have already had their say, but holy crap this pad. The haptics can do rain and hail hitting an umbrella, and they both feel different. It's a bloody marvel, and definitely the best haptics I've ever seen (felt) in a device.

OK, so sell this to me, because everyone says it's great - is this just fancy rumble? Or is there something more going on? Because everyone raved about the "HD rumble" on the Switch and how revolutionary it was, and it's never felt any different to regular rumble to me.

It's a billion times better than the Switch, but yes at the end of the day it's just rumble.

Have you ever used an iPhone with good haptics? It's like that, refined to the nth degree. The whole pad can still rumble in the normal way, but it can also produce uncanny sensations like crackling, walking on uneven surfaces, struggling through mud. It can click, and tap, and buzz.

It combines with the resistant (resistive…?) triggers for some pretty incredible effects.

Does the PS5 still have the download then copy bullshit for PS5-native titles? Apex updates on Ps4 always take ages because of this, as you get a preparing bit a downloading bit then a copying bit.

I still find it hard to imagine the pad - I really need to try one.

I don't think it does; or if it does, it's fast enough to not be an issue. Miles Morales seemed to be ready to play as soon as it had downloaded (which itself only took a few minutes).

First big firmware update for the Series S/X seems to be out now - not sure what it fixes yet but I've had lots of little niggling issues with things like Quick Resume so fingers crossed they're starting to get ironed out.

I'm going through my back-catalogue, seeing how everything runs on PS5, and the biggest surprise so far has been Obduction. It's a Myst-style adventure game from a couple of years ago, by the guys who made the original Myst.

On PS4 is was painful to play. Crap framerate and load times that frequently went above a minute, combined with puzzles that required you to initiate those loads in quick succession. Now it's a 60fps, fast-loading dream. I might finally finish it.

I'd be fascinated to see how Control runs on the PS5. I got freezing and very long load time (which nearly made me stop playing it) on the regular PS4.

I'd be fascinated to see how Control runs on the PS5

It's been pretty good on Series X, for the couple of chapters I tried; I imagine the PS5 will breeze through it as well.

Delivery due 28-29 Dec. A Christmas miracle.

IT'S COMING TOMORROW.

Quick PSA for anyone thinking of purchasing Overcooked! All You Can Eat edition on the Series X - might want to hold off on that. Every time an achievement pops, half the controllers disconnect. Seems to have been a bug since launch and it's not been fixed, it makes local multiplayer (which is what you're probably buying it for) extremely awkward. Game looks like a bit of a cash grab unfortunately.

Team 17, doing things half-arsed?! Well I never. What a shock, etc.

All you new and existing Xbox owners are doing your daily Microsoft Rewards, right? It's the most ridiculously generous rewards scheme ever - it easily pays for my GamePass Ultimate subscription each month and I usually get a bit to chuck into gift cards every now and then too.

Anyway, they've got a thing going at the moment for the next two weeks whereby every achievement you earn gets converted directly into Reward Points. You need to activate it in the console app before you begin. Last time they did this was back in September when I was between jobs and I managed to get 5000 points in two weeks - I'm not going to come close to that this time but it's an additional incentive to check out some new games and earn some easy achievements, and it is basically free money.

It's paying for your GPU every month?! That's 12,000 points. I'm barely scraping 5k and I've been doing it for ages. What am I doing wrong?

Well for a start, make sure you're doing all of it:

1) On the web at https://account.microsoft.com/rewards/ - three daily Bing links/quizzes to click, which build up daily streaks and bonus points if you do them each day, plus usually additional ones underneath that. Then you score points for doing a certain number of Bing searches each day across PC and mobile, plus more for using the Edge browser. I use a Chrome/Firefox extension called ABS to handily automate the daily searches with a single click.

2) On the console - the Microsoft Rewards app has weekly challenges, which again build up streaks (up to 2,500 points every ten weeks) plus a daily one which gives you 50 points on any day you earn an achievement, and a bunch of other stuff like the new challenge I mentioned above. If you're planning to buy something digitally, check here too as often they have something you can activate which showers you with points when you buy the game (I got 6000 points for buying the new Assassin's Creed game, for instance, which is basically a fiver off).

3) The GamePass app on mobile has a load of Quests which grant rewards for completing specific challenges, playing different games each month etc etc. Again if you do a certain number of daily/weekly tasks in a given month then you unlock Quest Completionist which is a nice round 1000 points.

Do all of those daily and you should be coining it in. It looks like a lot but it doesn't take too long and the GamePass quests in particular are often quite fun and encourage me to at least look at some titles I wouldn't otherwise have considered.

I once got enough points to buy a raffle ticket. Didn't win.

2017 Garwoofoo: The Xbox One is shit, I barely turn it on because it takes too long to update.
2021 Garwoofoo: You can pay for your Gamepass Ultimate with these 38 simple daily tasks!!!!!

Harsh but entirely fair. In my defence, grinding for points is quite compulsive, almost like a game in its own right. It's just like the games Alastor plays, without the anime tits.

I've even got my son completing the daily quizzes on his own account so I have the beginnings of a Rewards Points sweatshop going here.

I've even got my son completing the daily quizzes on his own account so I have the beginnings of a Rewards Points sweatshop going here.

[Takes detailed notes]

It's just like the games Alastor plays, without the anime tits.

Ahh, you had me right up until you said it didn't have anime tits. Microsoft missing a trick there, I reckon.

Did my tasks for the day earlier, set up the console to register my achievements. Sadly, since I'm in Germany, everything on the store is in German (even though my Xbox language settings say English) and I don't know what the rules are. I'll just play and hope for the best.

My German's hopeless too but you should be able to locate the tile in the Rewards app that has 10,000 points associated with it.

Click on that and it gives you two further tiles. You need to activate the first one to "start" the challenge. Then the second one just tallies your points. So as you get achievements, you should see the figure associated with that go up (e.g. 200/10000). You don't need to do any more, you get the Rewards points automatically. If that figure's not going up, you've done something wrong.

I worked that bit out.

It's the other stuff I fumble through. Obviously.