Are you part of the Great Console War?

The great battle many people face with their friends throughout their life… what console is superior to game on? You have PlayStation players who swear that their console is so much better than the Xbox, and you have Xbox players saying the same thing about PlayStation players. Then there is the master race of gaming, the PC players. These players consistently call themselves better than any console players due to their specs and quality of games being better. This is only due to the limitation’s consoles have with their price range and what they can put into a smaller box. However, with the latest news about the upcoming next gen consoles, this heated argument might come to an official end. On Monday, February 24^th, Xbox gave gamers some big news about their new system, the Series X. Microsoft says that with the new console, the players will more of an experience with PC gaming. The first big steps that Microsoft took with the new gen system is making all their accessories compatible with the new system. Which makes many players happy, due to some owning controllers that retail for almost half the price of the console itself or having a headset by RAZER which set people back $200! The savings players will have on controllers and headsets not only helps them in their decision to upgrade consoles, but also, they will be able to play games that they have purchased from any of the previous consoles in the past.

“You were either a Sega person or a Nintendo person; you couldn’t choose both.”

Blake Harris author of Console Wars: Sega vs NIntendo

Ok, so now let’s really get into why the next gen console is going to be revolutionary for gaming and much much more. The actual hardware upgrades. Typically consoles run games anywhere from 30 to 60 frames per second. This might sound like it’s a lot to someone who isn’t quite familiar with competitive gaming, but when PCs run at 60 to 200+ fps while staying at 4k resolution, this is quite slow, and players lose an edge in the competitive world. The Xbox One X, which was billed at the most powerful console yet, runs games at 60 fps naturally. This is big news for the Series X and the PlayStation 5, because they are rumored to run at 60 to 120 fps and 4k resolution.

This helps bridge the gap between PC and console even further. Another thing that helps close the gap, is that both future consoles will run solid state drives, which will help with shorter loading times and better overall performance across all games. If you have a computer with a traditional hard drive rather than a solid state, you know the pain of waiting for things to download or load faster. This is because a solid state does not have any moving parts, so they use a microchip, rather than magnets to read the data, which helps the speed and the life of the drive. For years, people who are wrestling with the choice of PC or console, tend to side with PC for the quality, but also the customization that it provides. Consoles have been very limited, if at all, in the allowance for addition of memory, swapping parts, and upgrading hardware. This is due to the proprietary hardware and software inside the console, this limits the limitations of the console. While PC players have free range to upgrade as they want, which ends up costing the player less in the long run. This allows the player to pick and choose what parts they want to have top of the line and what parts can be cheaper, depending on the usage of the computer itself. The new consoles are rumored to allow players to have more free range with upgrading what they deem necessary to improve their gaming experience.

These enhancements could open the door for more practical uses for consoles. VR is a huge area that is mainly dominated by PC, due to the limitations. But hopefully, consoles can jump forward enough to provide quality VR experiences. VR has so many real-world applications outside of gaming, that it is a huge steppingstone for future entertainment and technology. But that is for another post.

We will hope to know more starting today, the opening day of PAX East. Pax is an expo for companies to showcase their games, and for big companies to announce big news for consoles, games, and plans for the future.