Anyone else not impressed with the PS5 so far?

[Lucas Ayde]

hyphen said:

ajprice said:

Digital Foundry did a live stream chat tonight. Towards the end they were talking about PS5 and the teardown video. They haven't had any hands on with a PS5, but from the video they think the size of the unit is to space out the main heat producing parts on the boards from each other.

The PS5 isn't that much bigger than the X Box X and its thinner and more stylish. Microsoft have gone for wider and Sony for slimmer. So they had to make it taller to increase the volume inside for spacing as you say.

Without seeing a teardown of the X Box X, you would guess it took Sony a lot longer to design the internals of the Ps5 than a basic PC Case shaped Xbox. And all they get is grief

It's quite a lot 'bigger' - just narrower, but taller and deeper. Probably easier to slot into an existing home entertainment setup though, as long as you don't want to stack anything on top of it.

The Xbox is simple but unoffensive, quite minimal. The PS5 is more contrived and a case of love it or hate it and I don't think it will age well. They had it right with the previous gen PS4/Pro - blocky but unobtrusive.

[Lucas Ayde]

CooperS said:

Tbh we were playing quads Warzone and the four of us all have a Xbox or PS5 coming. But none of us are that hyped for the launch titles ( I haven't even bought any).

The only one of all the launch titles for either new gen console that really appeals to me is Demon's Souls (remake).

That is an awesome game - I played it so much on my PS3 - and the remade gfx look absolutely amazing. It's almost enough to make me spring for a PS5 ... almost.

However, if they haven't adjusted the difficulty in the remake (or given some sort of difficulty options) then there are going to be a LOT of frustrated people. The game is hard as nails and really requires the player to invest time not only in practicing it, but also doing a load of research online for the FAQs and guides. But the depth in there is quite astonishing and it is soooo rewarding once it all clicks.

[Lucas Ayde]

Obviously, pay using credit card if you are doing so in advance ... any issues with the retailer and you are 100% covered.

(I think most people would be using a card anyway but make sure its a credit card).

[Lucas Ayde]

Just saw that Digital Foundry are reporting that the PS5 does as good a job on back-compatibility and performance enhancement of PS4 stuff, as the Series X does with older Xbox One titles:

https://youtu.be/bKQ6NeTjccA

... This really changes my opinion on the PS5. Sony's record on back-compat with PS4 was awful (they ignored PS1 and PS2 even though they could easily have done it) ... and with performance enhancement on PS4 Pro was poor (very little enhancement of older PS4 stuff, they even hobbled the PS4 Pro initially when running older titles) . So, combined with Sony really saying little about PS4 compatibility in the past and really pushing upgrading and leaving the old games behind, it put me off PS5.

Now though, definitely thinking about it. I have a large PS4 library which would benefit. If only it wasn't so large and fugly (matter of opinion, but IMO it's fugly).

[Lucas Ayde]

DanL said:

agree that it should do it for free, but this is a feature of PS Plus - my games update in standby.

Edited for clarity.

Edited by DanL on Saturday 7th November 09:37

Auto-updating on my PS4 Pro is sporadic for games ... often times I'll find that I'm prompted to update when I go to run them (or I start randomly checking for updates and many games have them available, and I don't think it's because they happened to have come out that day). OS upgrades are always auto-downloaded.

In contrast, on my primary PS3 all games always auto-updated (secondary PS3 was manual).

[Lucas Ayde]

Ruskie said:

The reviews are very positive. I just wish the initial game line up was stronger and it had that killer title.

Demon's Souls was a fantastic game on the PS3 and the PS5 remake looks simply incredible. Aside from the difficulty likely being more than many people are ready for, it's one of the best ever launch titles for a new console IMO.

That said, not enough to make me take the plunge (I don't really want to grind again after playing it so much on PS3). I just think that the physical design is a bit of a horlicks in the name of using brute force cooling. The Series X seems much better designed physically. I'm hoping that there will be a 'slim' version of the PS5 available within 12 months. I'm in no hurry to upgrade - waited until PS4 Pro before I got into the PS4 from the PS3. And I may yet go for Series X and just keep my PS4 Pro depending on how we see things play out and the hidden advantages and disadvantages of both next-gen systems.

[Lucas Ayde]

Steven_RW said:

Lucas Ayde said:

Ruskie said:

The Series X seems much better designed physically. I'm hoping that there will be a 'slim' version of the PS5 available within 12 months. I'm in no hurry to upgrade - waited until PS4 Pro before I got into the PS4 from the PS3. And I may yet go for Series X and just keep my PS4 Pro depending on how we see things play out and the hidden advantages and disadvantages of both next-gen systems.

If they can get the PS5 to produce less heat then they can use a smaller cooler down the line, otherwise it is always size that works for air cooling. The fact it is huge should mean the fan speed and noise is much lower. You probably could cool it with a much smaller heatsink and a 3,000rpm fan or two but the noise would suck and would be in line with what people complained about on the Ps4 and first Ps4 pro.

Personally I'd like a big lazy air cooler and see it as a good solution.

Microsoft have managed to engineer a more powerful console than the PS5 using the same basic architecture (Zen 2 CPU core , RDNA 2 GPU units) and yet make it more compact and kept it silent.

I think Sony just went for the quick and easy solution (ie. Make a massive heatsink and fan and put it inside a huge box) to get the PS5 out to market early enough. They have a history of revisiting designs to update them (admittedly, it's typically been because they want to make them cheaper to manufacture) so hopefully they get around to the PS5 sooner rather than later.

Edited by Lucas Ayde on Sunday 8th November 11:38

[Lucas Ayde]

hyphen said:

Extremely unlikely. Slim versions always come a few years down the line, when sales start to slow and Sony have had enough time to develop it.

A slimmer ps5 cheaper to transport and store. If it was possible to slim it down and keep the same RRP, it would be already done.

Sony will revise manufacture as soon as they can if they see the opportunity to cut costs and/or make the machine more appealing to consumers. They did it many times with the PS3 including three separate physical housing designs as well as multiple internal revisions. The base PS4 had two physical housing designs plus multiple internal changes over its lifespan.

My only worry would be that they make it worse .... The first big revision of the PS3 about a year after it came out kept the ugly housing but ditched two of the four USB ports, removed the card slots for SD/CF, stopped supporting SACD playback and dropped the hardware PS2 back-compatible components (all of which were things that I found useful). It's what spurred me into buying an OG PS3 at the time, to get one before they downgraded it.

[Lucas Ayde]

hyphen said:

How much more powerful, and is it actually needed vs a faster hard disk? As Sony have focused on the latter and the reported numbers are:

IO Throughput

PS5 : 5.5GB/s (Raw), Typical 8-9GB/s (Compressed)
XboxX: 2.4GB/s (Raw), 4.8GB/s (Compressed)



As how many times will you push performance to the limit? Wheras the Sony's 2x faster SSD will be benefited from every second!

Edited by hyphen on Sunday 8th November 21:44

Wow, so much fanboy-ism and technical ignorance in one post. Where to start?

First, the SSD in the Xbox isn't exactly slow.

Second, going by loading times of back-compatible games, the Xbox SSD easily keeps up with the Sony one in practical 'load a game' applications which should tell you how 'important' the technical speed difference will be in the real world. We might see games that make heavier use of SSD to stream in textures or other data needed by the GPU but I would expect that the Xbox SSD should be effectively as capable at that - they are both based on PCI Express 4.0 tech. If anything, having more usable storage capacity (which the PS5 appears to have sacrificed to get more raw speed) is likely to be more beneficial to the end user.

Third, and more pertinently, a faster SSD isn't going to help shift pixels, ray trace or draw textures on a 4k screen which is what the console will be ACTUALLY be doing 'every second' when you are gaming.


The PS5 isn't requiring so much cooling because it has a 'fast SSD', it's because Sony are needing to cool the CPU/GPU silicon. MS managed to make a console employing the same underlying Zen2/RDNA2 architecture with a higher clocked CPU and more powerful GPU setup which didn't need to be housed in a massive slab in order to cool it quietly.

I would suspect that they wanted to get it to market quickly and were very aware of the criticism that the PS4 drew for noise (my PS4 Pro can sound like a jet turbine on some titles and my OG PS3 is also pretty noisy) so just went for a massive box containing a huge heatsink and fan which is the brute force solution to cooling requiring minimum fancy engineering.

Sony are pretty proactive when it comes to revising their console designs so I'm hopeful that there will quickly be a more compact version with some more sophisticated cooling engineered in.

[Lucas Ayde]

DanL said:

Lucas, I imagine all of what you say is true. I don’t know, as I don’t pay attention to the tech specs - if I wanted to do that, I’d still own a gaming PC.

What I would say is that Sony have a console that will (just!) still sit on a shelf under the TV. Microsoft’s next gen tower won’t - it’ll have to sit awkwardly to one side, or perhaps behind the TV if things can be neatly arranged... Form factor isn’t a killer app, but it is something.

Looks like you can lie the Xbox on its side to make it fit most cabinets, just looks awful that way(IMO). And you can easily either hide it away when stood upright or maybe even put it beside the TV on the shelf because it has a reasonable compact, square, footprint.

The PS5 OTOH is literally a huge slab that Sony have attempted to disguise with funky side plates which make it look like the Tower of Sauron. It'll be a squeeze to fit into a typical shelf designed for a DVD/BD player or satellite box, certainly won't be easy to stack directly on top of something without a shelf and nothing can be stacked on top of it. Hiding it away is also going to be difficult because of the bulk.

IMO it's on a par with the OG PS3 (which I actually own) for ugliness but even bulkier. The only reason I didn't wait for something like the PS3 Slim before buying my PS3 was because Sony were about to cut down the features in their first revision, about a year after it went on sale in the UK and I wanted the SACD playback, PS2 hardware support and extra usb ports and memory card slots.

I will probably wait until there's a more compact version of the PS5 available before I take the plunge, but of course everyone has different priorities and some may actually like the overstated size and looks. They'll certainly sell as many as they can make for the first few months anyway. But I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a more conventional looking and compact PS5 by Christmas 2021.

[Lucas Ayde]

BaronVonVaderham said:

Don’t worry, the OP has been on a mission with this thread to convince everyone that xb > ps.

Must work for microsofts marketing department, or failing that he is just another fanboy

Oh dear, are the schools still off?

For what it's worth, I'm now more likely to get a PS5. I did have an Xbox Series S on pre-order (as I only have 1080p TV sets) but it didn't seem to be living up to the early promises of a cheaper, '1080p Series X' so I cancelled it .... and Sony's better than expected backwards compatibility (and enhancement) for PS4 titles has meant that since I currently own a PS4 Pro (and 2x PS3, and a PS Vita, and even a Vita TV for that matter) mean I'll likely eventually go that way when I want to do a console upgrade as I have a ton of games for it. Many of those are unfinished or even unplayed and mainly in 'digital' format. Just having been on PS Plus since 2011 means I have a ton of PS4 games from that, which I would want to keep playable.

However, to my eyes the PS5 hardware is currently a large, ugly beast of a console and I'm in no hurry to get one. It's, factually speaking, less powerful than the Series X and the bulk is because of a brute force cooling design which Microsoft clearly managed to do much better. It just speaks of Sony pushing hardware out sooner than they would have liked or, perhaps, to a price. My guess is that it'd be at least £500 without the £450 Series X and no 'Playstation Plus PS5 collection' without the Xbox Gamepass.

As I have witnessed with PS3 and PS4, Sony do regularly revise and (generally) improve the design of their consoles so I'm sure they'll have something less whale-like out before next Christmas. It's not like my PS4 Pro is going to explode the moment the PS5 is released.

[Lucas Ayde]

Wadeski said:

I'm really torn as to which system to pick up. Whereas usually its a pretty easy pick between consoles (which one has the games you like? which one is more powerful?), this generation, the hardware spec is nigh on identical, but the experience the two companies are promising is radically different. Sony is for continuation of console norms, MS is basically moving to a Netflix model.

I didn't buy an XBONE or PS4 because I'm busy and I hated slow installs, patches, boot ups, and tutorials in the last gen of games. If I have 1hr a week to play games, I don't want to spend 45 mins of that hour watching status bars. I want to push the on button, and blow stuff up.

PS pros:

- I have been a big PS fan (although I chose an 360 over PS3) and love heritage PS games (Tekken, Ridge Racer, etc)
- PS will probably have the best exclusives for the next year (until exclusivity kicks in for the studios MS bought)
- The force feedback controller sounds really, really cool
- Will probably have better support from Japanese developers (my preference is for Japanese arcade style games)

Xbox pros:
- Its much, much better looking. I'm 39 and I've spent a lot of money making my living room look nice. The PS5 looks like an ugly gaming PC.
- "Netflix for games" probably fits my schedule better...and I hope it leads to shorter, more risk-taking games vs 50 hour walking sims.
- Batcompat is actually a thing for me, there are a ton of games from prior gens I missed and would like to try (especially if they are free)
- You get the feeling MS are trying harder this gen, as they are underdogs.

Then again, launch window availability may determine what I CAN buy vs what I might like...

There's no need to rush out and try to get a next-gen console before Christmas (unless you want to give it as a present).

I will just wait to see what the New Year brings ... I didn't move to the PS4 generation from my PS3 until Sony came out with the PS4 Pro, which was enough to tip me into getting one (along with PSVR coming out, wanted to try VR).

The Series X looks like an awesome machine with a more 'complete' feature set out of the box, more powerful hardware and a better engineered physical package plus the fantastic Gamepass - but a sad lack of must-have next-gen games at release and in the near future. If I was already on Xbox this gen, it would be a must-have for me though for the enhancements of existing titles.

The PS5 ticks most of the boxes (especially with my PS4 background) but it's hard to get past the looks and size, for me at least.

And of course, the lockdown tech buying mania means it's so hard to get any popular new tech even if you want it .... otherwise I'd be rocking an RTX 3070 in my PC now. (that might be a blessing in disguise if the 7nm RTX rumours are true for 2021).

[Lucas Ayde]

Crafty_ said:

So while they were making this "brute force solution" with "minimum fancy engineering" they just threw in the liquid metal for fun then ?

Are you hoping that MS revise their design too, given it runs hotter than the PS5 according to digital foundry.

Duh. Heat coming off/out of the console is a GOOD thing, it's what is supposed to happen.
8x Zen2 CPU cores plus 12 TFLOPS (well, only about 10 in the case of PS5) of RDNA2 GPU power is going to make a lot of heat.

The goal is to evacuate the heat from the APU and make sure that the console doesn't crash/shut down due to overheating. Preferably this should be done quietly.

Both the XBox and PS5 do this. But the Xbox does it without being a massive eyesore.

[Lucas Ayde]

Crafty_ said:

The PS5 looks fine, but in any case who the hell sits and stares at a games console ? Those with no next gen games to play I guess... ?

Your assertion that Sony have just slapped together a design using "brute force" is way off the mark, but fanboys are gonna fanboy.

And, no, I don't have a gaming PC or either console on pre-order.

Fanboy of what? I currently have a PS4 Pro (and regularly use my two PS3s and PS Vita) and so a PS5 would be the natural upgrade path. So I guess that makes me a Sony Fanboy?

Microsoft just plain did a better job of engineering the Series X - it's more powerful and they've managed to cool it silently without having to resort to huge cases. The form factor is actually pretty inoffensive too and easily hidden if that's what you want, unlike the PS5 which is a marmite design and an absolute paving slab of a size. Their software features and display device support is also much better, though Sony will likely catch up on that eventually.

Here's my prediction - the PS5 will be in a different form factor by next Christmas. Sony are pretty quick to revise and update their console designs (there were many, many revisions between my OG PS3 and 'Super Slim' PS3).

[Lucas Ayde]

Uhtred said:

Someone correct me if I am wrong but there doesn't seem to be too many advantages to buying the disk version over the digital version as most modern games are stored entirely on the console anyway?

Only really useful if you know someone else that is willing to share disk games with you.

Also, is crossplay between this gen of consoles likely on most games?

I much prefer the PS5 and always have but most of my mates play on Xbox.

If you already have a PS4 then you probably have some titles on disc that you want to keep playing. Plus you can pick up physical PS4 disks pretty cheaply on sale, or secondhand. And play Blu Rays or, I assume, UHD movie discs.

As you say, just about everything does a full install to internal storage anyway these days (and all next-gen stuff will), so you won't save space on the internal drive - the physical discs are just treated like DRM keys. I can't imagine that they will ship too much next-gen stuff on physical discs it'll probably be mostly collectors editions.