Gaming hardware has been steadily improving over the years. Nvidia came with its RTX 3000 series and it’s simply the best raw GPU power money can buy today. Apart from that, there have been some really innovative developments on cooling, mechanical keyboard, game controller, and technology fronts.
Now, it’s a whole new world altogether with PlayStation and Xbox coming up with their new generation consoles to lure gamers.
Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One have both struggled to keep up with the scaling of graphics power and render capacity of PCs, which has been improving steadily over time. Let’s be real, PC gaming doesn’t really work in installments or major upgrades. They’re more like a competitive MMORPG game – patches, bug fixes, cleanups, and frequent updates in general. On the other hand, consoles are operating systems or an AAA game franchise like GTA. Rockstar Games will take its time to release its new major update for GTA.
That being the most significant difference between console gaming and PC gaming, it’s not hard to believe that PC gaming makes it difficult for console manufacturers to keep up.
It’s always a battle of how fast can we catch up to the new bar, the new performance spike – something we call a power spike of a character in a MOBA game.
Consoles are not modular and as a result, not upgradable. They’re preconfigured. You’re pretty much stuck with the hardware until the manufacturer makes a new one so that you can sell your old system. And in a scenario like that, it becomes hard to deploy technologies as they come.
For example, while AMD’s Threadripper and Intel’s 12-generation CPUs have been setting the bar pretty high and while Nvidia has been upping the GPU game by introducing the RTX 30s, consoles have been supplying patch downloads that improve their dashboard look and feel.
Not quite the catching up that’s comparable.
But things are better now. Xbox and PlayStation have both released the next generation console gaming experience. And it has blown minds.
Just to refresh your memory:
What are these new consoles?
- The Xbox Series X is a completely refreshed take on console gaming. It looks pretty much like a PC case, to be honest. It has an AMD 3.8GHz Zen 2 CPU that’s octa-core with 16GB of GDDR6 memory – that’s the best type of RAM you can get.
- The PlayStation 5 is a redesigned console that comes in a curved black-and-white body. The PS5 is also designed around a similar Zen 2 CPU from AMD along with a custom-built AMD Radeon GPU and has exactly the kind of RAM that Xbox X does.
Both the consoles are equipped with enough power to run 4K games natively. And the icing on the cake is their blazing fast speed. Both consoles come with custom-designed SSD chips and controllers that can remove the loading screens forever.
PS5 and Xbox Series X are both priced at $499. The lower-end variations are Xbox Series S at $299 and the PS5 Digital Edition is priced at $399. One-third of the Nvidia RTX 3090 is not bad at all.
In terms of game titles, we got AAA blockbusters such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Cyberpunk 2077, Horizon Forbidden West (PS4 and 5 – sometime next year), and so on.
Also read: Xbox vs. PlayStation vs. Switch vs. SNES vs. Luna vs. Atari VCS – which console is good for what?
