This week will mark a new era in the gaming industry. Sony and Mircosoft released their new gaming consoles, Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X, respectfully. Both releases are one of the most anticipated consoles both companies have released in a while. While both are getting a much-needed upgrade to CPUs and storage space, PC is also joining the race. Nvidia also announced its new hardware graphic card for PC, the RTX 3000 series. With the promise of better gameplay and smoother graphics, gamers can expect game developers to utilize everything at their disposal.
Sony, along with the PS5, is marketing the power of their hardware along with the follow-up sequel to their biggest game, Spider-Man. At their last event, Sony displayed its performance and all other underlying hardware. The ability to play 4K games at breakneck speed has been one of their main focal points leading up to launch day. Sony is reported to run faster than the Xbox Series X in terms of processing power. The PS5’s AMD powered GPU pushes out 10.28 teraflops, a major jump from their PS4’s 1.84. Sony is known for its great console exclusive games like The Last of Us, Spiderman, and Uncharted. While Sony has said most PS4 games will playable on the new PS5, not much information is known yet.
Microsoft’s Xbox Series X/S pretty much stacks up to the PS5, with only a few changes. In the budget-friendly Xbox Series S, Mircosoft has made its mission statement fairly clear. Allow you to play next-gen games without breaking your wallet. In the S series, you can still get the same hardware as the X series so you won’t feel left out when you’re friends are gaming on 4K. The Xbox Series S pushes 120 FPS, something that was mostly unheard of only a few years ago. Like Sony, Mircosoft also has its own line of console exclusive games in Halo, Fallout, and Forza. How these games will be used in the coming years is still unknown. In a year, built with economic uncertainty, the Xbox Series S will be the hottest next-gen console to get for many people.
PC gamers shouldn’t feel left out in the cold this holiday season. Nvidia pushed this two years ago with its RTX 2000 graphics card line, but big game developers weren’t ready, consoles definitely weren’t ready, and pricing was a big issue. As always, PC was one step ahead of the competition. Now all three next-gen consoles are promising ray-tracing support, and we’ve started to see more and more games support it. Call of Duty, Fortnite, and many others are some of the big additions, and there’s bound to be a lot more throughout 2021. With the new hardware making such huge changes to the gaming landscape, it’s only right to assume the markets will soon follow in terms of profits.
