The Power of the PS5: Professional Edition

2024/9/10

Sony announced the latest iteration of their fancy console and it's got X% more renderosity, Y% more computasticity, and Z% more RAM-ulousness. Yay. Now console gamers can pay $200 USD more over the current thingy, or whatever passes for local equivalent given the general volatility of global currency stuff plus various taxes and also just charging more in other countries regardless, to play ultra fancy graphics at better framerates. While that's still potentially cheaper than an equivalent gaming PC, I still have not been much of a fan of this apparently current console generation, largely due to the game selection and general design trends, and the mass firings for even successful studios aren't helping. Most games I'd want end up on PC or even last generation anyway. Or even the Switch, whatever that counts as.

The one thing I'd even want on PS5 is Astro Bot, in addition to the game of that series that comes with the console. However currently I can't quite justify the cost or physical space for a $500 USD or so ($350 used for a working one last I checked) machine that's bigger than how huge the original Xbox was, and that I only really want one game for, and that's if it doesn't end up on Steam or whatever store possibly chosen at random in a couple years. Still, my only hope for the PS5 Pro is that it pushes down the secondhand price for the previous machines and still ideally be able to find a disc capable one if I go for it. Though with Christmas approaching that's not going to be very soon at least.

I still do have the PSVR Astro Bot to play through, and this time a random power outage shouldn't take me out of that since I've set up a battery backup for somewhat recent consoles, at least for those that don't have their own batteries like the Switch. I guess there's just the question of what Microsoft will do, seeing as they pretty much already made their "pro" and "lite" versions. Will they bother with Xbox Series Y, or end up dropping out and leaving the console market in favor of focusing on adding more spyware to Windows? Or maybe they'll just do nothing much with hardware and hope to stay afloat with Call of Duty on Game Pass while deciding what studios to axe next.

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