Why Buying Bethesda Could Put Xbox On Top

As you all probably know by now, Xbox have made the unprecedented move of acquiring Zenimax Media, the Parent Company of Bethesda, for $7.5 Billion. The announcement was made in the early hours of September 21st by Phil Spencer and is a huge play in lead up to next-gen. It’s also no coincidence that Xbox announced the move a day before pre-orders went live for the Series X & S. So, what does this all mean?

Firstly, it means that all of the studios under the Zenimax Studios banner will now be absorbed into Microsoft Studios, these include: Bethesda Softworks, Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog and Roundhouse Studios. This pushes the total amount of studios they own to 23. Some of the more notable IP’s that are now the sole property of Xbox now include:

Phil Spencer made specific reference to Bethesda’s upcoming title ‘Starfield’ in his post announcing the move (Image Source: GamesRadar)

• Elder Scrolls

• Fallout

• Doom

• Wolfenstein

• Quake

• Dishonored

• Rage

• Deathloop

• Ghostwire: Tokyo

• Prey

• The Evil Within

• Starfield

If you’ve been paying attention to the recent PlayStation 5 developments, you will notice that ‘Deathloop’ & ‘Ghostwire: Tokyo’ are actually PS5 Exclusives. Xbox have already said that they will honour those studios’ existing commitments to Sony, meaning that Xbox will be making games that are exclusive to their rivals’ platform, go figure.

On the flip side of this, the question on everybody's mind is how this will work with regards to exclusivity on future releases. Phil Spencer has said that games made by these studios will be on Xbox, Windows and ‘other consoles’ on a ‘case by case basis’. Looking at that list, you’ve got some of the most successful and instantly recognisable franchises in gaming, not even to mention Halo. If the the next Elder Scrolls or Fallout were to be Xbox Exclusive, that would definitely make a lot of people at least consider the platform. Having the best titles split between two platforms could become quite expensive, so that would really suck for those who can’t afford to run two paid platforms. However, if you did have to choose one or the other, Xbox make a very good case with their Game Pass & All Access programs.

Xbox’s Game Pass is now one of the best deals in gaming, and it’ll keep getting better (Image Source: The Verge)

Exclusives (or high quality ones at least) are something that Xbox had a major shortage of in the last Console generation, with Sony running away with AAA titles that up until now, made it the biggest player going into next-gen. But that has all been turned on its head within the space of a day. Suddenly, Xbox Game Pass has evolved into one of the best deals in gaming with those heavy hitting titles that will be available on Day One of release, you might never have to buy a game again. It looks like Microsoft is slowly turning Xbox into a paid subscription, almost Netflix-esque type of service. There are over 100 games there already and that will continue to grow, this acquisition has made it abundantly clear that Game Pass is the future of Xbox. With the inclusion of the All Access program, you can have a Series S, Game Pass Ultimate for 24 months & EA Play for £20.99/month, or a Series X for £28.99/month with the same perks. Neither of these have an upfront cost either, making it perfect for entry level players or those without the money to buy a new Console upfront. Even if you can afford all of the upfront costs, Game Pass/All Access can effectively pay for itself just by saving you the need to buy games individually.

Also, I don’t think that Xbox are at all interested in playing out an ‘Exclusives’ war with Sony, they certainly have the means to go toe-to-toe with some of those huge titles (The Last of Us, God of War, Horizon etc), but that doesn’t mean they have to force that choice on the consumer. Sometimes the best use of that kind of power, is to not use it at all, or at least in the way Sony is currently flexing their First-Party titles. Xbox could easily allow all of their property to be available on all of the other platforms, but make their platform the best to have it on. As with their other First-Party titles, Zenimax releases would (very likely) be available on the Game Pass from release, meaning that you don’t have to buy it and it’s just there straight away. If it’s available on PlayStation, but you have to fork out for it when you could effectively have it for free, it might as well be exclusive. Additionally, Xbox could have a staggered release window with those properties releasing first on the Xbox with Game Pass, then collect the revenue from other platforms. It’s a win-win for them.

Playstation does have it’s alternative, but it isn’t nearly as flushed out or well supported as might ought to be (Image Source: GamesRadar)

Another thing to note is that Phil Spencer has a well-known stance of not believing in Exclusives, he thinks they are bad for the industry. This approach would certainly make a lot of sense in that regard as they would not box anyone in (for the lack of a better phrase), they would just make their platform the best that it can be, irrespective of what titles Sony has. Moreover, they can use these titles as bargaining chips and completely breakdown the concept of Exclusives, industry-wide. If there are certain games that Sony want to just be on the PS5, Xbox can potentially use the likes of Doom, Elder Scrolls & Fallout as bargaining chips to keep other companies hogging properties.

If Xbox were to use this responsibly, which I think they will, this could be a great thing for gamers in general and maybe help to bring down some of those pay-walls for content that everybody should be able to play & enjoy. They might surprise me, they have every right to play hardball and battle it out with Sony with a duopoly of the best & biggest titles currently out there. But this would go against what they’ve been doing with their Game Pass & All Access programs and how they’ve acted on this subject up until now. This may put companies such as Steam in a difficult position, with those titles at their disposal, Game Pass could be a very viable alternative to a paid store front. Only time will tell how they respond to this, or if rumours of an agreement between the two materialise.

There is also the subject of Sony, how do they respond to this? Do they continue with their current strategy, or do they start to prioritise Playstation Now in the same way that Xbox do with Game Pass? This could spark a new trend of Studios being founded and aggressively snapped up by either Microsoft or Sony, which could heavily limit the amount of independent game titles in the future.

What we do know is that this is one of the biggest power-plays the industry has ever seen and is sure to turn more than a few heads towards the Xbox Series X & S, especially over time.

PS5 vs Xbox Series X – The Complete Buyer’s Guide!

PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X? Which one is the better Console and which one should you guys get? Well, spoilers, they’re both very good Consoles. You’ll be extremely happy with either of these two.

But, there are quite a few differences that might make you pick one over the other. We did a similar comparison back in March, but that was before we knew the Design of the PS5, or even the Games and Graphics reveals, so there’s tons of new details in this video.

So, without any further ado, here is the ultimate PS5 vs Xbox Series X comparison, covering the Design, Specs, Games, Graphics, Special Features and finally…Price.

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Design

Starting off with the Design, the PS5 and the Xbox Series X couldn’t have been more black and white, literally. The Xbox Series X has this very elegant and classy look in all Matte Black. It is bigger and fatter than the Xbox One X, but that’s because of the massive Cooling System that this Console needs. 

In terms of the Ports, we have three USB Type A Ports, all are USB 3.2. We have one on the front and the other two are on the back. In addition, we have a HDMI 2.1 Port, which supports 4K120 as well as 8K60, an Ethernet Port and a Kensington lock so that you can lock your Xbox in place. This is very useful for public spaces, as well as the Expansion Slot for the first party SSD Expansions, which I’ll be covering in just a second. 

The Digital-Only Version of the PS5 is definitely the better looking of the two.

The PS5 on the other hand, is completely different. First of all, it comes in this really nice Matte White colour, with Glossy Black accents and a blue LED strip which I’m assuming would change its colour based on the different states that your PlayStation can be in, such as Rest Mode, Sleep, Powered-On and so on. Size-wise, the PS5 is gigantic. It is much taller than even the Xbox Series X and also taller than pretty much any Console ever made. It is also said to be very heavy at 4.8kg, however, the PS5 is slimmer than the Xbox. 

When it comes to the Ports, the PS5 features one USB C Port on the front, as well as a USB Type A. We don’t really know any other details and Sony hasn’t shown us the back of the Console just yet. It is safe to assume that it will have an HDMI 2.1 Port, an Ethernet Port, a PSVR 1 Port and likely even a PSVR 2 Port, which will allow the External Receiver for that to be connected. The PSVR 2 will be a completely wireless Headset. Also, I do expect a few more USB A Ports on the back. 

Now, there will be two models of the PS5, a Regular Version and a Digital Only Version, which lacks the Blu-Ray Drive. This Digital Only Version looks much better as it’s perfectly uniform. The Disc Version looks like it has this tumour that grew on its side, it doesn’t look good at all and it’s pretty obvious that when Sony designed the PS5, they designed the Digital Version first as that’s really the future. Speaking of models, there is a rumoured second model of the Xbox Series X just around the corner, this is the Lockhart / Xbox Series S, with this possibly having a very square and boxy design. Personally, I really do like both but I am leaning more towards the Digital Version of the PS5’s Design. Something about it just makes it look more futuristic and high-tech, I’m really into that.

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Specs

When it comes to the Specs, both of these Consoles feature an AMD CPU and GPU alongside hardware based Ray-Tracing and a very fast SSD. So, you would assume that these Consoles are identical in terms of the Performance, but that’s not really the case.

The Series X splits its RAM into two chunks, at different speeds.

CPU-wise, both feature an AMD Ryzen Processor based on the Zen 2 Architecture. These are basically Desktop class CPU’s that you would find in AMD’s latest offering. They’re both 8-Core Processors, however, the Xbox Series X is clocked at 3.8GHz, while the PS5’s CPU is clocked at 3.5GHz. Not only that, but Sony has confirmed that the PS5’s CPU will be running at a Variable Frequency, meaning that while the Xbox will be running at a constant 3.8GHz, the PS5 can go up to 3.5GHz, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it would run this high all of the time. This was apparently done so that the PS5 has more power to divert to the GPU, when needed. Otherwise, the CPU might consume a ton of power even when the Game itself doesn’t actually require that much. 

On the GPU side, both GPU’s are based on AMD’s new Navi/RDNA 2.0 Architecture, which isn’t even out for PC yet. The Xbox GPU has 52 Compute Units, or “Cores” that each clocked at 1.825GHz, while the PS5 has 36 Compute Units, clocked at 2.23GHz. This translates to the Xbox having 12.15 TFLOPS of GPU Compute Power, while the PS5 has 10.28 TFLOPS. That’s a 1.87 TFLOP difference. Fun fact, the difference between the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X was 1.8 TFLOPS, so this is quite significant. 

RAM wise, both have 16GB of GDDR6 Memory, but they’re both using it in a fairly different way. For example, the PS5 has a 448GB/s Memory Bandwidth for the entire 16GB chunk. The Xbox, on the other hand, has 560GB/s but only for 10GB, while the other 6GB are running at a slower 336GB/s. 

At this point, it seems like the Xbox Series X is superior, Performance wise, to the PS5, which is indeed correct. However, the PS5 does have one big advantage when it comes to the Storage. Both Consoles now have a Flash Storage Module, or an SSD, compared to the mechanical HDD’s that the current-gen Consoles have.

Microsoft have Proprietary Drives, but the PS5 allows Third-Party Support.

The Xbox Series X comes with a 1TB SSD, while the PS5 comes with a 825GB SSD. But, while the Xbox’s SSD has a read speed of 2.4GB/s, almost 50 times faster than what the Xbox One, the PS5’s SSD has a read speed of 5.5GB/s, 110 times faster than the PS4 and Xbox One’s Drive. I’ll go into more detail about why this is important when we get to the Graphics section of this video.

Now, with both of these Consoles, you will be able to expand the Storage if you really need to. On the Xbox, Microsoft will be selling Drives that they’ve developed in partnership with Seagate, which will allow you to add one extra Terabyte to the Console. 

Sony won’t be selling any first party SSD, instead, you will be able to buy any third party m.2 Drive and replace the Internal Storage with that. However, it will need to have at least the speeds of the Internal Drive. As of right now, there are no Drives that even match that speed. 

You can indeed connect External HDD’s to both of these Consoles, but you would not be able to play any next-gen Games from those as they’re simply way too slow. You can store your current-gen Games on those, which will be playable on both of these Consoles. 

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Games

But the specs really don’t mean anything if there are no great games to take full use of them. So, what games are we getting for each Console? Well, this is where the biggest differences between these two Consoles really show.

‘Horizon: Forbidden West’ is just one of the many AAA Exclusives that Sony will have before there are any on the Series X (Source: Sony).

On the PS5, you will have Exclusive Games. So, just like with the PS4 now, all new games made by Sony studios will only work on the PS5. That means that the next ‘Spider-Man’, the next ‘Horizon’, the next ‘God of War ‘and so on. The good news is that those games will look absolutely incredible and truly next-gen. The bad news is that you need to buy a PS5.

When it comes to the Xbox, things are entirely different. Microsoft says that for the first two years, there will be no Exclusives at all on the Xbox Series X. This means that any new Game that you will buy for the Xbox will work on the Series X, the Xbox One X, the Xbox One S, the Xbox One as well as on any Windows PC. So, the great news here is that you don’t really have to buy the Xbox Series X to take advantage of the new Games. The bad news however, is that the Games will not look as good as the Exclusives will on the PS5. There’ll be more about that when it comes to the Graphics. 

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Graphics

So now, which Console will have better Graphics? This is also really tricky.

If you’re into cross-platform Games, such as ‘Call of Duty’, ‘Fortnite’, ‘Minecraft’, ‘Overwatch’, ‘Assassin’s Creed’ or basically anything that works on both Playstation and Xbox, those Games will run better on the Xbox. Most of these Developers have already confirmed that the Xbox Series X will run their Games at a higher Resolution and higher Frame-Rates. In fact, Microsoft is aiming for a full Native 4K experience at least 60 FPS, with some Games even targeting 120 FPS. 

Footage from ‘Halo Infinite’ did not showcase the best of what the Series X can offer (Source: Xbox).

Sony, on the other hand, hasn’t really confirmed that they’re even targeting 60 FPS. Insomniac Games for example, the Developer of the next ‘Spider-Man’ Game, have confirmed that ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ will have a 60 FPS Mode. But, their Tweet is a bit strange and it sort of implies that you’ll have to choose between 4K and 60 FPS or if you want 60 FPS, you’ll need to have some graphical options disabled. 

Since the PS5 will indeed have Exclusives at launch, these games will indeed look true next-gen, while the launch Games on the Xbox Series X, since these are cross platform/non-exclusives Games, will just look like the current-gen in higher Resolution and at a higher Frame Rate.

Take a look at ‘Halo Infinite’, which we just got a gameplay reveal for last week. The game looks decent, it runs in Native 4K60 but the Graphics themselves just look like current-gen. Take a look at the Grass and the Lighting, now compare it to, let’s say, ‘The Last of Us: Part 2’ or ‘Ghost of Tsushima’. In these games, the Foliage Density is significantly higher. Not only that, but in ‘The Last of Us: Part 2’, you can even interact with the foliage to the point where you can bump into a Pine Tree and you’ll see the snow fall off of it. Also, pay attention to the Lighting and compare both of these to how it looks in Halo Infinite. Also, keep in mind that ’The Last of Us: Part 2’ and ‘Ghost of Tsushima’ are PS4 games, ‘Halo Infinite’ is a next-gen title.

Long story short, when you develop a Game, you have to develop it on the weakest common denominator and then let the more powerful hardware run that same Game at a higher Resolution and Frame-Rate.

Otherwise, if you develop the Lighting and the Physics on a higher-end Platform, porting that down is going to be incredibly difficult. For example, ‘Halo Infinite’ was developed on the Xbox One and then ported onto the Xbox One X, the Series X and then onto PC.

For a PS4 Game, ‘The Last of Us: Part 2’ looked truly next-gen (Source: Sony).

Luckily, Microsoft has also shown a few Games developed on the Series X, which would not work on the Xbox One at all, just the Series X and PC.  Those games were the new ‘Fable’, ‘State of Decay 3’, ‘Forza Motorsport 8’ and a few more. Finally, these definitely looked like next-gen Games.  Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t said when we’ll get these Games, but it seems like they will all come out after those first two years as again, these Games will now be “Exclusives” rather than Games that also work on the Xbox One series, in order to take full advantage of the hardware inside the Series X. 

So, at launch, cross platform Games will look better on the Xbox One X, while Exclusives will look better on the PS5 as the Xbox won’t actually have any until two years after launch. We don’t yet know to what extent cross platform Games run better on the Series X just yet, this is because the PS5 does indeed have that much faster SSD. If we take a look at ‘Star Citizen’, a Game that is actually a PC Exclusive, it has been fully optimised with SSD’s in mind and if you have an m.2 Flash Storage Module for example, that game can run at up to 20 FPS higher than if you were running the same Game, on the same platform, with the same specs, but on a HDD.

The speed difference between a HDD and a standard 2GB/s m.2 Flash Module is a factor of 40x. The speed difference between the PS5’s SSD and the Xbox SSD is only about 2x. This is not enough to give us 20 FPS or anything like that on the PS5, but likely something that can make this Performance gap between these two Consoles, look smaller.

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Special Features

So what about the Special Features? Is there anything unique in terms of each Console that might make you pick one, over the other? Well, the Controllers are a pretty big difference here. 

The Xbox Series X Controller looks almost identical to the Xbox One X Controller, which is not necessarily a bad thing as that Controller was regarded by many as the best Controller on the market. This has been improved this time by adding a Dynamic Latency Input which is supposed to significantly reduce the Input Lag, making this Controller likely the best  choice if you’re into competitive gaming. 

Microsoft have very much taken the approach of ‘If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’.

However, the PS5’s Controller is a complete redesign. Not only that, but it also implements a Touch-Bar and Haptics Support similar to what we have on modern Smartphones, just on steroids. This will give you the ability to feel different surfaces in a Game, I’m really curious to see how well it works.

The Xbox Series X though, has a massive advantage in terms of Backwards Compatibility. It allows you to play Xbox One, Xbox 360 and even original Xbox Games, while the PS5 will only allow you to play PS4 games with the DualShock 4. Also, the Xbox does feature the Xbox Game Pass, which lets you play a selection of Games via a monthly subscription, which is pretty amazing if you just want to try some Games out. Sony does have PlayStation Now, which is also a monthly subscription, but this one streams Games rather than downloading them, so the quality is affected here. Some Games can indeed be downloaded though, but only a few. 

However, one big advantage to the PlayStation could be the new 3D Audio Engine. This is a hardware-based engine, which will immerse you significantly more into a Game by giving you 7.1 Surround Sound in all PS5 Games. 

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Price 

And finally, let’s talk about the price. So the prices have not been revealed as of yet, which means that the prices that I’m going to give you are based on leaks from some reliable sources. 

The PS5 is said to start at $400 for the Digital Version and $500 for the Disk Version. The Xbox Series X is said to start at $500, but we’ve also seen reports that Microsoft will also launch another Xbox, the Xbox Series S, which would start at around $300. However, the Series S will be considerably less powerful than the Xbox Series X, whereas both versions of the PS5 are identical in Performance. 

The BEST TV (2020) - For PS5 & Xbox Series X!

The PS5 and the new Xbox Series X will both be out around November 2020, so now is a very good time to buy a new TV. This is pretty much the best one on the market, especially if you’re into Gaming.

Ok, so a bit of a background story first. My previous TV was an LG B7 OLED. This TV came out in 2017, hence the ‘7’, and it was the lowest-end OLED TV from LG, but that was fine because all of the other models still had the same OLED Panel and the same CPU. The only real difference was that the C7, E7 and W7 had a nicer Design and improved Speakers, that was it.

I bought this TV in mid-2018 for about £1,500, which was quite a good deal, and I’ve been very happy with it. I didn’t really plan to upgrade to the 2018 models as they were mostly the same. The 2019 models were using almost the same OLED Panel again and the 2020 models had some minor improvements, so I didn’t really see myself upgrading for a few more years.

Well, LG HQ actually got in touch and they’ve sent me the brand new LG CX, which just came out now, in 2020. Massive thanks to LG for sending this over. I have to say, it turns out that the CX is a massive upgrade over my B7 and here is why I genuinely believe that this TV is the best TV that money can buy, for the next-gen Consoles. 

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4K OLED 

So, number one, this is a 4K OLED TV.

OLED is really the highest-end TV technology on the market right now. The only other technology that’s superior is microLED, but that’s still a few years away from being available for consumers. Samsung is indeed working on that Wall TV but until microLED becomes a real thing, OLED is the best.

Don’t be fooled by Samsungs ‘QLED’ Branding, OLED is definitely the superior technology.

Some of you might have heard of QLED, which is what Samsung calls their high-end TV’s. Spoiler though, QLED is still LCD, it is not OLED or anything like that. Essentially, on an LCD Display, the Pixels only provide the Colour and not the Brightness. This means that you would need a Backlight in order to be able to see anything on the screen. This Backlight not only makes the TV’s very thick, but it also means that when you want to display Black, the Backlight would still have to be fully on and would therefore look grey-ish, they wouldn’t be pure Black.

On OLED Displays, the Pixels provide both the Colour and the Brightness, so you can turn each of these 8 million Pixels off individually and get perfect Black Levels and an infinite Contrast. It’s the best picture quality that you can get right now. 

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120Hz

Now, the second reason why this TV is so good for Gaming is that it supports 120Hz, meaning that it can display up to 120FPS in a game, which is something that both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X will support.

A little bit of downgrade, but it makes almost zero difference.

There have been some TV’s, mostly OLED TV’s from LG before, which have also supported 120Hz. However those ones, like my B7, did not have HDMI 2.1, which meant that while Netflix content could run at 120Hz, all the inputs going into the TV were limited to 4K 60, rather than 4K 120 like we have now. Not only that, but the CX can do 10-bit at 4:4:4 Chroma, which is pretty nuts. However, this is actually a bit of a downgrade from the LG C9 from last year, which could also accept a 12-bit signal. This is because the HDMI Bandwidth has been downgraded from 48Gb/s to 40Gb/s.

My friend Vincent Theo from ‘HDTV test’ did a very detailed Review of the CX and talked about this more in-depth, so if you want to know what this all means, I highly recommend watching his content if you’re looking for the best TV Reviews on YouTube. Long story short, this won’t affect you at all, as 10-bit already displays over 1 billion colours compared to the usual 64 million colours on 8-bit Displays. The Panel is still a 10-bit Panel anyway, it’s just that having a 12-bit signal would have resulted in slightly better Gradients when it comes to Banding. A very minor thing, which I did want to point out. But no need to worry, the PS5 and the Xbox Series X will be fully utilised by using this TV.

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Response Time 

Now, the next most important thing about a Gaming Monitor, or a TV, is the Response Time. This is the amount of time it takes for the Monitor to switch the Pixels from one state to another, after it receives an input.

This TV could easily be used as a Gaming Monitor, especially the smaller variants.

Gamers prefer extremely quick Response Times, ideally 1ms. Unfortunately, TV’s have typically always had around 30-40ms and around 20ms for the very best TV’s on the market. Well, not anymore. The LG CX 2020 has a 1ms Response Time, on par with all the highest-end Gaming Monitors out there. Anything that I do on my Controller translates pretty much instantly to the TV, Modern Warfare (Warzone) feels like it’s had a massive upgrade. It feels incredibly responsive and it’s pretty much the same experience as playing on a high-end Gaming Monitor.

Not only that, but the CX supports both NVIDIA GSync and AMD Freesync, so if you decide to hook this up to a PC, you can actually use it as a Gaming Monitor. Since this is a massive OLED Panel, the Gaming experience would be even better, even when compared to a standard Gaming Monitor. LG does have a smaller 49” model, which is more suitable for PC Gamers as it’s smaller. If you care about a fast and competitive Gaming experience, the CX is the best TV on the market for this. 

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HDR Performance 

Another important thing about any Gaming TV is the HDR Performance. 

The CX supports Dolby Vision, HDR 10, HLG and pretty much all the main HDR modes. But, thanks to the brand new Alpha 9 Gen 3 Processor, the Brightness of HDR Content, when in Game Mode, has been significantly improved. With my B7, HDR Gaming was pretty dim to the point where if I was playing anything during the day, I could barely see anything on the screen. But on the CX, the difference in HDR Performance is night and day. Even when in HDR Game Mode, the screen stays just as bright as when it is not in HDR Game Mode. In fact, it was so bright that I had to turn down the Brightness as it was bothering my eyes. 

This was probably the biggest improvement over my old B7.

Not only is the CX significantly brighter in HDR Game Mode, but we also have a new HDR option called ‘HGIG’. What this is, is a brand new HDR standard where the Games themselves send the HDR Metadata directly to the TV, through the Games Console. What this means is that you’ll get a perfect HDR image without having to calibrate the image, as it will always be calibrated as the Game Designers intended. There are only a few games that do support it but for the ones that do, such as Spider-Man and Modern Warfare, the results are incredible.

So, this is why this TV is perfect for the next-gen Consoles. You get a 4K OLED Display with a 120Hz Refresh Rate, 1ms Response Time, NVIDIA G-Sync & AMD FreeSync Support and this brand new HGIG HDR Standard, on top of an already bright HDR representation.

But, there are a few more other things that I really love about this TV.

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Smart Home

For example, not only does it have an AI Voice Assistant, but it even allows you to set-up your Smart-Home Accessories and control them from there, with full support for the Google Assistant and Alexa. You have this massive digital hub where you can control your entire home, which is really cool.

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AppleTV & AirPlay

The CX also supports both Apple AirPlay, which means that you can stream content to it directly from an Apple device, and an integrated version of the AppleTV App, meaning that there’s no need for you to buy a separate Apple TV Box. I haven’t even used my Apple TV at all, since I got this TV.

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Magic Remote

Not something that you might normally think about for a TV, but it makes a huge difference.

Probably my favourite part about this TV, is LG’s Magic Remote. LG has had this for a few years now, you essentially get a Mouse Cursor that you can control by just waving the Remote in the air. It honestly works so well that now it’s simply a joy to navigate through the TV Menus. Even typing text with this Remote is incredible, it’s just like using a Mouse on a digital, on-screen Keyboard. The Remote itself also has dedicated Buttons for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, which allow you to instantly access the Apps, there’s really no need for an AppleTV at all anymore. 

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WebOS

Also, the UI on LG TV’s is just brilliant. You get this Navigation Bar on the bottom, which contains all of your Apps and you even get a dedicated App Store from where you can download even more. The catalogue of Apps isn’t that massive, but you can still find all of your most popular TV Streaming Services. 

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Sound

The sound on this is very good and you can even enable AI Sound, which will dramatically improve the sound quality based on the content that you’re watching. Also, the TV Remote itself has a Microphone which can monitor the sound levels of the TV and adjust those based on that as well, pretty smart.

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Design

Finally, you cannot talk about a modern TV without talking about its Design. The CX is basically all screen. There are no Bezels at all aside from the very slim screen border, but that’s it. It looks absolutely stunning. 

Out of the current range of OLED TV’s, the CX is the best value for money.

I also love the stand, which is made out of Machined Metal, it looks very sleek, premium and the TV itself is also crazy thin. It does get quite thick towards the bottom, as that’s where all the components are located, but I do still think that this is one of the best looking TV’s on the market. So there you go, my In-Depth Review of the brand new LG CX 2020. The TV which I consider to be the best for Gaming, in 2020.

Ok, but…why not get the BX which is less expensive? Well, the BX comes with a weaker Processor, which means that the HDR Processing won’t be as good on the BX, as it is on the CX. All of the higher-end models like the EX or the WX still have the same image quality and processing power as the CX, it’s just that those are wall mounted. 

There’s honestly nothing negative that I can see about this TV, aside from the price. It’s quite expensive but OLED TV’s have dropped in price over the years. Again, massive thanks to LG for sending over this amazing TV!

Nintendo Switch Pro – The PS5 & Xbox Series X Killer?

INTRO

As most of you probably know, 2020 is the year of..well..self-isolation but also the year of new Games Consoles. We got the last major release back in 2013, with the PS4 and the Xbox One, and now we’re waiting on two big releases in the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Then, we have Nintendo as the third player in this console war.

Some of you might say that Nintendo’s not really a player because, performance wise, the Nintendo Switch is far behind the PS4 and the Xbox One, not even to mention the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X. While that is indeed true, you can not argue with the fact that the Switch has now outsold the Xbox One, making the Switch the second best selling Console out right now, right after the PS4. 

The demand is definitely there and the interest from the hardcore & casual gaming community is also there. The Switch came out in 2017, three years ago, so while it is still technically in the middle of its’ life-cycle, it is significantly underpowered when compared to even the PS4 & Xbox One. We’ve seen a lot of leaks that Nintendo is working on a Nintendo Switch Pro, so here is everything we know about it and also why I think this could just be the surprise contender to the PS5 and the Xbox Series X.

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The Original Switch

We’ll be honest, when the Nintendo Switch came out, we weren’t fans at all. We did like the idea of having a console that can be used in so many ways, from hand-held to table-top to having it connected to a TV, but we were not a fan of how underpowered it was.

The original Switch was truly unique, but it took some getting used to.

We kept comparing the Graphics on the Switch to the PS4 and the Xbox One in third party games, but there was just no comparison. Whilst other games such as Fortnite and Witcher 3 are playable on the Switch, they look significantly worse than on the PS4 and the Xbox One. But then, in late 2019, Apple launched Apple Arcade. I signed up for the free trial on my iPad and when I was on the road and travelling, I gave it a shot. It was pretty good but it was heavily lacking any big Triple-A titles. Which made me think, what if I actually gave the Switch a try? 

So, I bought my first Switch in late 2019, less than six months ago, and I simply fell in love with it! It felt amazing in the hand, the games were just unbelievable, playing Triple-A games on the go is just something that you cannot do on anything else right now. This is unless you count Game-Streaming but unfortunately, when you’re traveling, the connection is very poor so it’s not really doable.

But what sold me right away were the first party games such as: Link’s Awakening, Pokémon Sword, Super Mario Odyssey, Animal Crossing and others. These are some of the best games that I’ve ever played and the fact that I could play these on the go, as well as on my TV, on the same device was absolutely outstanding. The Switch has actually now become my favourite console ever. Also, we’ve seen a lot of leaks & rumors on Nintendo’s upcoming Switch 2, or Switch Pro, Console.

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A Mid-Cycle Upgrade

Nintendo has actually released two new Consoles in 2019. One of them was a newer model of the original Switch, with significantly improved battery life. The other was the Nintendo Switch Lite, a brand new Switch, which was specifically designed for hand-held play and does not support TV output. 

A console built purely for hand-held gaming, that supports AAA Titles. The Switch Lite was released in 2019.

It’s pretty safe to assume that the next Switch would have some resemblance to the Switch Lite, in terms of its design. This is how we modelled our very own ZONEofTECH concept of the Nintendo Switch Pro.  We thinned out the Bezels considerably to the point where they’re even thinner than on the Switch Lite. The Switch Lite already had much thinner Bezels, when compared to the original Switch. We modelled ours with a 7.3” Display, up from the current 6.2” panel, but kept the exact same Form Factor with the same thickness, height and width, just with a larger Display. The current Switch has a plastic Display which is very easily scratched. It’s an LCD Display but the Colour Reproduction is quite poor, so we’ve equipped ours with an OLED panel, a glass panel which would be perfectly suitable for this Switch Pro.

The reason why this might be called a Switch Pro, rather than a Switch 2, is because rather than this being the next generation Switch, it will be a spec bump to the current model, similar to what Sony and Microsoft have done with the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X. It will have a higher price point, but it will offer more premium features that the current Switch isn’t able to, such as higher Frame-Rates and especially a higher Resolution for games.

We have seen reports that Nintendo is finally considering releasing a Switch with 4K output support, something that the PS4 Pro introduced back in 2016. This also implies that we would very likely get a bump in handheld Resolution, from 720p to at least 1080p. Even with a more powerful chipset, which we’ll cover in just a second, it would be quite difficult for the Switch to be able to do 4K gaming, considering that it also needs to be a hand-held Console. And while the hand-held output would still just be 1080p, the Switch would require significantly more power when docked, in order to be able to do 4K.

If Nintendo were to add something like a Thunderbolt Port and a dedicated GPU in the dock itself, this would easily solve all of the performance related issues. This way, you can still have a very good hand-held experience in 1080p, but then also get full 4K the moment you dock the console in. At the moment, on the current Switch, aside from a bump in Resolution from 720p to 1080p, there’s isn’t really that much that you’re getting by docking the console. A dedicated GPU in the dock itself would solve this issue.

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Specifications

Speaking of specs, we have seen reports that Nintendo and Nvidia are working together in order to develop the new CPU & GPU for the next generation Switch. As you probably know, the current Switches both use Nvidia’s Tegra X1 chip, an extremely weak SoC (System on a Chip) that contains both the CPU and the GPU. It was developed in 2015, five years ago, originally for the Nvidia Shield TV Smartbox, which in 2019 got upgraded to the new TegraX1+ Chip.

Will a potential Switch Pro get more current, high-end hardware?

The X1+ is about 25% more powerful than the original X1 from 2015, but even a 25% bump in performance would be extremely disappointing for the next Switch. This is the Processor that both the 2019 Switch and the 2019 Switch Lite should have included but instead, we just got a more power efficient version of the original X1. This makes us think that maybe ,and hopefully, Nintendo and Nvidia are indeed planning a very big performance upgrade for the next Switch, with an SoC designed specifically for the Switch. 

Essentially, when the Switch was launched, Nintendo didn’t know how well it was going to sell, especially after the disaster that was the Wii U. So, instead of creating a Custom Chip, they just repurposed the best Mobile Processor that Nvidia had, which at that time was the two year old Tegra X1. But, considering how well the Switch has done in terms of sales, it is extremely likely that the reports stating that Nintendo and Nvidia are working together on as Custom Chipset are indeed correct. Japanese website ‘Gamepeida’ reports that the RAM would now be doubled to 8GB, compared to the 4GB we have now and the Storage will also be bumped to 128GB, up from the current 32GB. We don’t think the Storage was ever an issue, as you can indeed expand that via a microSD card, but you couldn’t really do anything about the Display or the performance. 

A new report from ‘DigitTimes’ claims that the Switch Pro would enter mass production in Q1 2020, but this is likely not the case anymore, given the recent outbreak throughout the world. Also, Nintendo themselves have indeed confirmed that there will be no new Nintendo Console in 2020. So, this Switch Pro would very likely release in early 2021, rather than 2020. This is mostly because it won’t be able to compete with the PS5 and Xbox Series X, at least when it comes to the performance.

Another report claims that Nvidia is working with Nintendo, on developing a new SoC on their new Volta architecture. But even Volta is quite old as it was released in 2017, it was replaced by Turing which itself will soon be replaced by Ampere. We wouldn’t be surprised if Nvidia ends up using an older architecture again, but given the success of the Switch, it would make more sense to design something that is at least set in the present, when it comes to raw power.  Nintendo also showed us the trailer for ‘Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2’, but they haven’t said anything about a potential release date. I would expect ‘Breath of the Wild 2’ to launch at the same time as this new Switch, this way they can promote the capabilities of the new Console whilst also promoting the game itself.

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Backwards Compatibility, Remote Play & Design

Speaking of games, Backwards Compatibility has been reported to be happening numerous times and I wouldn’t really expect otherwise.  The PS5 and the Xbox Series X will both support current generation games, while the Xbox will go as far as supporting Xbox 360 and even original Xbox games. Not supporting Nintendo Switch games, especially considering that this will be a Switch Pro, rather than a Switch 2, is looking extremely unlikely.

This wouldn’t be the first time Nintendo & Sony have teamed-up. (Image: Archyde)

Now something interesting that we were not expecting to see, is that Sony was surveying their users on Remote Play support for the Nintendo Switch. I don’t think any reasonable person would say no to this, so it might be the case that by the end of 2020, we could start seeing Remote Play support on the current Switch Consoles. This isn’t really a next-gen Switch feature, but it is something that we did want to mention.

One of our complaints with the original Switch was that it was quite uncomfortable to use in hand-held for long periods of time. This was indeed fixed with the Switch Lite, but it does remain an issue on the regular Switch. You can buy some grip attachments to solve this, but they only end up making the Console thicker and heavier. 

With the Switch Pro, we’ve modelled our concept as a mix between the Switch Lite and the regular Switch. Aside from the Display, we’ve also replaced the Arrow Keys with a proper D-Pad, just like on the Switch Lite. We’ve made the Joysticks a bit bigger and also applied the same colour options as we have on the Switch Lite. This would be a single colour for the entire device, but Joy-cons would still be removable and replaceable, in case you do want to make it look a bit more unique.

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Conclusion

In the end, this is how this Switch is looking so far, with a brand new CPU & GPU that are both based on a more modern architecture from Nvidia, which is finally capable of doing 4K gaming when docked.

If you think about it, Nvidia actually needs this more than Nintendo does. They’re doing well in the Laptop space but AMD is completely taking the Console space. Both the current generation PS4 and Xbox One, as well as the next generation PS5 and Xbox Series X, are all running on AMD hardware.  Nvidia has to release something ground-breaking for this next generation Switch.

PS5 vs Xbox Series X – CPU, GPU, Storage, Games & Price!

INTRO

Sony has finally unveiled the full specs of the PS5. So now that we know the full specs of both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X, which one is actually more powerful? Some of you might have heard that the Xbox Series X is more powerful than the PS5, but there are some ways in which the PS5 significantly tops the Xbox. Without any further ado, here is the full comparison of the PS5 and the Xbox Series X, covering the: CPU, GPU, Memory, Storage, Special Features, Exclusive Games and Price! 

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CPU

Starting off with the CPU, they’re both doing very well here. They both feature a desktop class, AMD Processor that’s based on the AMD Zen 2 architecture. They’re also both 3rd generation AMD Ryzen Processors with 8-Cores, which means that they’re quite similar to the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Processor, which is a very well received CPU. 

It’s nowhere near as powerful as the 3700X, as the clock-speeds are quite a bit lower. We have a 3.5GHz clock speed on the PS5 compared to the 3.8GHz clock speed on the Xbox Series X. From this alone, you would think that the Xbox is quite a bit more powerful in terms of the CPU, which to some extent is true. However, Microsoft has indeed confirmed that if SMT (Simultaneous Multi-Threading) is enabled, these speeds would drop to 3.6GHz. Sony’s 3.5GHz clock is indeed with Multi-Threading enabled. So, in that case, considering that most applications and games will indeed be taking advantage of Multi-Threading, the difference in CPU power isn’t as high anymore, although the Xbox Series X still has a slight advantage over the PS5.

Now, something that Sony has mentioned is that their system is capable of Turbo Boosting. However, the highest turbo boost clock speed will still be 3.5GHz. This simply means that games will only run at 3.5GHz if they really have to. Otherwise, they will run at a lower clock speed, in order to keep the system cool and also bring the fan noise down. The Xbox Series X will be running at that 3.5GHz clock speed pretty much all the time. So, slightly higher performance on the Xbox, but a lower fan speed on the PS5. 

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GPU

So, what about the GPU? If we look at the raw GPU power, the PS5 has 10.28 TFLOPS, while the Xbox Series X has 12.16 TFLOPS. Now, that’s a 1.88 difference in raw performance, which is actually pretty massive. The PS4, for example, had 1.84 TFLOPS, while the PS4 Pro had 4.2. If you just look at TFLOPS alone, the difference in performance between the PS5 and the Xbox Series X is almost as big as the difference in performance between the PS4 and the PS4 Pro.

However, when Mark Cerny, the PS5’s Lead System Architect presented the PS5 on stage, he did talk about why the PS5 has a lower number of TFLOPS. First, he mentioned how the new GPU architecture that they’re using (RDNA2) has a TFLOP count which is not equal to GCN TFLOPS. Long story short, even if the PS5 looks to be 2.44 times more powerful (GPU wise) than the PS4 Pro, it is actually way more than that as RDNA2 is a much newer architecture.

The difference between the PS5 and the Xbox Series X is almost exactly the same as the full TFLOP count on the PS4, although this was older architecture.

Now, when you calculate the raw performance or the TFLOPS of a GPU, you need to take a few things into account. The biggest ones being the number of CU’s (Compute Units) and the Frequency at which these are running at. So, if we take a look at these, the PS5 has 36 Compute Units running at 2.23GHz, while the Xbox Series X has 52 Compute Units, running at 1.825GHz. Mark Cerny did say that they made that choice because he prefers to prioritise a higher clock speed, to a higher number of Compute Units and in a way, we do agree. Think of Compute Units as a Core in a Processor. Many applications (especially games) do prefer using a lower number of Cores at a higher clock speed, as opposed to a higher number of cores at a lower clock speed. Of course here we’re talking about the GPU and not the CPU, where things are indeed a bit different. So let’s take a look at the Xbox One X and the PS4 Pro.

As most of you may know, the Xbox Series X is noticeably more powerful than the PS4 Pro is, being able to play most third party games at a native 3840x2160 Resolution, in some cases even at 60FPS. While the PS4 Pro can easily do 2560x1440 but it has some serious issues doing anything higher, natively. Also, the Xbox One X had 6 TFLOPS of GPU Compute Power with 40 Compute Units at 1.172GHz, compared to 4.2TFLOPS with 36 Compute Units at 911MHz for the PS4 Pro. You can see how the higher clock speed and those four extra compute units made such a massive difference on the Xbox One X. 

So, Sony might be right about something here. A higher clock speed for the Compute Units is usually preferred to a higher number of Compute Units, at a lower clock speed. Even though on paper, the difference is TFLOPS between the PS5 and the Xbox Series X looks massive, in reality, this might not be as high. However, I would still put my money on the Xbox Series X being slightly more powerful than the PS5, albeit at a lower performance gap than what it looks like on paper. 

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Memory

Moving on to the RAM. Well, both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X now have 16GB of GDDR6 Memory, which is not RAM but part of it will be used as RAM for the system, while the rest will be used in games, as Video Memory. They both deal with this approach quite differently.

The PS5 uses 16GB of GDDR6 Memory, on a 256-bit Memory Interface, running at 448GB/s, which is insanely fast. Just to give you guys an idea, the original PS4 had 8GB of GDDR5 Memory on a 256-bit Memory Interface while running at 176GB/s, the PS4 Pro had a 217.6GB/s Bandwidth. Sony hasn’t yet said how much of this 16GB Pool would be available to developers, but it is expected to remain the same as before, with 3.5GB used by the OS and the rest, 12.5GB in this case, available for developers.

On Microsoft’s end, things are quite a bit different. Even though we have the same 16 GB GDDR6 Memory, we have a 320-bit Memory Interface, compared to 256-bit on the PS5, this Memory is split into two chunks. One chunk is 10GB in size, with a Bandwidth of 560GB/s, which is much higher than on the PS5, while the other chunk is 6GB in size, with a Bandwidth of 336GB/s, which is noticeably lower than on the PS5. Microsoft said that they did this because they wanted developers to have access to some really fast GPU memory, the CPU doesn’t need that much fast memory and neither does the OS. The OS will be using 2.5GB of 336GB/s memory, which means that in a game, the GPU will have access to 10GB of 560GB/s Memory and the CPU will get 3.5GB of 336GB/s Memory. 

If you do the average of 560GB/s and 336GB/s, you actually get 448GB, which is the same memory bandwidth that the PS5 has. As the APU, which includes both the CPU and the GPU, are both made by AMD, it makes sense for the memory to be extremely similar. It seems like Microsoft has just split that in a different way, compared to Sony. 

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Storage

Something that is indeed quite different, is Storage. Both the Xbox Series X and the PS5 have an SSD now, which is light years ahead of the HDD that we had in the current generation. The fastest m.2 Flash Modules that we have right now, are around 3-3.5GB/s in speed. However, the PS5’s custom made Flash Module has a speed of 5.5GB/s. That’s absolutely insane! This is essentially 110 times faster than the PS4 Pro’s traditional HDD. 

The Xbox Series X has a 2.4GB/s module, which while still 50 times faster that the Xbox One’s drive, is considerably slower than the PS5’s drive. On top of this, Sony has said that the PS5’s internal storage is so fast, that it can technically be used as RAM, 5.5GB/s is almost as fast as DDR3 RAM which, for a 1066MHz Memory, is around 8.5GB/s in speed. Microsoft has also addressed this possibility, but realistically Sony has a much bigger advantage here, that is, if developers do make full use of it.

Fun fact, if you take a look at Star Citizen, which is a PC exclusive game, this game makes full use of m.2 Flash Modules. If you have an m.2 Drive, you can get even 30fps higher in the game, compared to using a standard HDD, so this is a good example were a faster Storage can indeed directly impact the FPS in a game.

An old idea for a new generation (Credit: Xbox)

Another area in which the PS5 excels when it comes to Storage, is in terms of storage expansion. The Xbox Series X has a 1TB Internal Drive. The PS5 could have anywhere between 800GB to 1TB, but the usable capacity is likely to be around 825GB, like we’ve seen in Mark Cerny’s presentation.  However, while the Xbox Series X will feature these proprietary 1TB drives that you can just slot in the back and expand the Storage, the PS5 will support any m.2 Module that you can buy off of Amazon (or elsewhere), that has at least 5.5GB/s in speed. They will be releasing a list of all supported models, but that’s great because it means that we’ll get a much higher selection compared to the Xbox and we can even get higher capacity drivers if we want. 

However, while the PS5’s m.2 Expansion Modules will be replacing the Internal Drive, the Xbox module will be adding to that Internal Storage. On top of this, Microsoft has confirmed that external HDD’s are still supported, for the previous generation games. Sony hasn’t talked about supporting external HDD’s just yet, but it is likely that they will be doing something quite similar.

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Special Features

Let's summarise what we’ve said so far. CPU wise, the Xbox is slightly more powerful. GPU wise, the Xbox is again looking to me more powerful but Storage Wise, the PS5 has more than double the performance. Now we have the Special Features, the things that make each console unique.

Both consoles will indeed be supporting previous generation games, so both will be Backwards Compatible. But, while the PS5 will only be supporting PS4 games and not even all of them at this point, the Xbox Series X will be supporting Xbox One games, Xbox 360 Games and even some original Xbox games. So if you care about playing your entire library of old games, the Xbox is a much better choice. Sony does have Playstation Now, which does support some PS3 games, but the catalogue just doesn’t compare to what Microsoft is offering. 

Both consoles will also support Ray Tracing, which will make Reflections, Shadows and Lightning look significantly better than what we have now.  

This time, 3D Audio is built into the hardware to make it the new standard.

An area in which Sony should excel, is in terms of Audio. Mark Cerny  did talk a lot about their new Tempest Engine, and how they will be achieving 3D Audio thanks to a dedicated hardware engine. Remember the dedicated Playstation Platinum headphones do support 3D audio on the PS4, however with this new hardware based engine, every pair of headphones will support 3D Audio on the PS5. Sony is even working on bringing this to TV Speakers and Soundbars as well.

While the Controller on the Xbox Series X looks mostly the same as on the Xbox One X, with the exception of a share button, the PS5 controller is said to be adding a full display as well as Haptic Feedback, which will allow you to feel when you’re driving on asphalt or grass or dirt. Apparently, this is one of the best features of the PS5, according to people that have actually tried it. But, Microsoft has indeed introduced a Dynamic Latency input. By significantly reducing the input lag from the Controller, this could make the Xbox the better choice for competitive gaming.

Speaking of this, both consoles will be supporting 120z output, so games will be able to run in up to 120fps, as well as 8K Resolution, but this will be a Dynamic Resolution while 4K would be Native this time. 

Both consoles will also be supporting different methods of Compression for games, so games will actually take up less space than they do now. On top of this, Sony has confirmed that you will be able to uninstall different parts of a game, such as the campaign after you’ve finished it, and then install the multiplayer right after. 

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Exclusive Games 

Speaking of games, there is a very big difference between the two, in terms of exclusives. This is because Microsoft has confirmed that there will be no exclusive games on the Xbox Series X for the first two years, as all Xbox Series X games will be required to also work on the Xbox One series of consoles. Unfortunately, this does mean that developers will be severely held back in terms of what they can achieve, at least for the first 2 years. If you’re not sure why we’re saying this, we made a full video in which we explained why this is a real issue, be sure to check that out.

The PS5 on the other hand, while it will indeed have some PS4 games, like ‘The Last of Us 2’, that will also work on the PS5, it will indeed have exclusive PS5 games that will only work on the PS5 and not the PS4. Because of this, we might see true next-gen games on the PS5 first.

Microsoft did show us a gameplay demo of Gears 5 which compared to the Xbox One X, looked barely any different on the Series X. However, they did show us Hellblade 2, which was absolutely mind-blowing in terms of Graphics, this did indeed look like a truly next generation game. This is said to be coming only to the Series X and PC but we don’t know when this will be exactly.

So there is a chance that this will be the first game that was developed with just the Series X in mind and not Xbox One, the main reason why it can look so good. This is what you can expect from games that have indeed been developed for the next-gen hardware, compared to Gears 5 for example, which looks the same as on the current generation, just with better texture detail and longer rendering distances. 

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Price 

Credit: PSErebus

And finally, we have the price. Neither Sony or Microsoft have revealed the prices yet.  However, we have had some leaks that put the PS5 at around $500 (£450 in the UK), making the PS5 $100 more than the PS4 Pro. 

Microsoft on the other hand, is said to have two models of the Xbox, a low end model and the high end model that we’ve all seen. The low end model is said to be less expensive than the PS5, while the high end model is said to be more expensive. I would expect the high end to cost around $580-$600, while the low end should be around $300-$400. 

Now, some of you might think that paying this much for a console is just ridiculous, but you would be surprised. A Console would last you for six to seven years. A Smartphone, which now usually costs close to $1000 (or more), is something that most people replace every two years. So, in six years time, you would’ve spent $3000 on smartphones, compared to $600 on a new console. This is a pretty massive difference.

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Conclusion

So, in the end, which one is the better console? Well, the Xbox Series X seems to win in terms of CPU and GPU performance. The PS5 is more balanced when it comes to System Memory and it is significantly faster when it comes to the Storage, plus it also supports third-party SSD Modules. The PS5 supports 3D Audio and Haptic Feedback on the Controller, while the Xbox Series X supports a lower latency and significantly more previous gen games, while also offering two models of the console. When it comes to exclusives, Sony seems to have the upper hand, at least for the first few years.

PS5 (2020) – 25 Things You Didn’t Know!

INTRO 

The Playstation 5 has finally been revealed by Sony! Well, some of it, anyway. Mark Cerny, the lead system architect for both the PS4 and the PS5, has gone on stage for almost an entire hour and has talked very in-depth, just the way we like it, about all the main specification of the PS5. So, without any further ado, here are 25 interesting facts that you might not have known about the PS5!

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1) World’s Fastest SSD

At Number One, the PS4 came with a traditional HDD. The PS5 now comes with an SSD. But this is not your usual SSD. This is actually a custom SSD module made by Sony, that is ridiculously fast. It turns out that this SSD module that Sony custom made for the PS5 is actually the fastest SSD module in the world right now!

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2) 110 Times Faster

Ok, but how fast is this internal storage of the PS5? The PS4 had a traditional HDD, that had around 50MB/s transfer speeds. The PS5 now uses this brand new Custom SSD, which as transfer speeds of 5.5GB/s (or 5500MB/s), which makes it 110 times faster! 

A top of the line MacBook Pro, iMac Pro or Mac Pro, which are known to have the fastest SSD modules on the planet right now, have around 3.5GB/s transfer speeds. The PS5 has 5.5 GB/s, a massive improvement over even the fastest SSD modules out right now. But, how is this even possible? Well, the PS5 is now taking full use of the brand new PCIe 4 standard, this is how it can achieve these incredible speeds.

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3) Mark Cerny

The guy that was on the stage and talked about the specs of the PS5 and how the entire system works, is none other than Mark Cerny himself. Mark Cerny was the lead system architect for the PS4. He was the main reason as to why the PS4 was so successful when compared to the PS3. The PS3 had this very complex architecture with the Cell Processor, that developers found extremely difficult to develop games for. 

The PS4 on the other hand, not only had significantly more power than even its competitor, the Xbox One, but it had a more traditional PC like architecture and it was so much easier for developers to take full advantage of it. All of this was thanks to Mark Cerny.

He was not only responsible for the PS4’s success, he was also heavily involved in the development of some very well known 1st party PS4 titles, such as Ratchet and Clank, Crash Bandicoot, Uncharted Drake’s Fortune, God of War 3, Killzone 3, Knack, The Last Guardian, Knack 2, Spider-Man, Death Stranding and so many more.  Not only that, but as an American, he’s also fluent in Japanese and moved to Japan in the 80’s and 90’s.  

He’s given tours of their game development studios to Steven Spielberg and Michael Jackson and he’s well known for developing the “Cerny Method’, this is where developers try to complete just a small portion of the game in pre-production fully and from there they can decide if the whole game is worth taking any further. Now, Mark Cerny has also been directly involved with the PS5’s development by being the lead system architect.

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4) Massive Freedom for Developers

Since this new SSD is so insanely fast, it brings some massive freedom for developers. For example, because of how slow the HDD was, in some cases developers had to implement a lift, or a very long staircase, or a subway system or something that would allow the game to load a new part of the world or scene in the background. Masking loading times with a subway ride would no longer be required so developers can now design their games much more freely.

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5) SSD as RAM 

We knew it was going to be fast, but this was totally unprecedented.

Because of that insane 5.5GB/s speed, the PS5 can actually use the SSD as RAM (to some extent) and offload some of the assets onto it, keeping the RAM free for the most important assets.  But, how much faster is the actual RAM?

Well, DDR1 memory at 266MHz is around 2.1GBs. DDR2 Memory at 533MHz is 4.2GB/s. DDR3 memory at 1066MHz is 8.5GB/s and DDR4 memory at 2133MHz is 17GB/s. So this SSD, while still nowhere near the speed of RAM, is still close in performance to DDR3 memory, which is still very impressive. 

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6) Kraken Compressions

Mark Cerny did mention that they’re using something called Kraken Compression to reduce the size of the games by 10%. Not only that, but he also mentioned, last year, that the PS5 will allow you to install or uninstall specific portions of the game. For example, in a game like Modern Warfare, you will be able to just install the campaign and then uninstall it once you’ve finished playing it, then you can install the Multiplayer and so on. This will save a ton of space by letting the user install just what he or she wants, in a game. 

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7) SSD Size 

We know that this SSD is fast but how big is it? Well, Mark Cerny hasn’t really said that but, in a slide from yesterday’s livestream, he did mention 825GB as an example for the size. This points to a 1TB SSD, but the usable capacity for developers would indeed be smaller, at around 825GB, due to formatting and the space that the OS will require. 

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8) SSD Expansion

The good news is that you will actually be able to expand  this 1TB of internal storage in a pretty genius way. While Microsoft will be selling their own 1TB Proprietary SSD modules for the Xbox Series X, Sony will actually allow you to install any m.2 Drive that you can buy off of Amazon. However, they will need to be at least as fast as the internal storage, and they will need to be PCIe 4 modules. At the moment, there are a few of these drives but the speed varies. Mark Cerny did mention that we should wait until manufacturers start producing these drives, but once they do, you would be able to buy any 3rd party drive as long as it matches the 5.5GB/s speed of the PS5 SSD.

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9) Weaker than Xbox Series X?

Speaking of the Xbox Series X, now that we know the GPU power of the PS5 (10.28 TFLOPS), it seems like it is noticeably weaker than the Xbox Series X (12 TFLOPS). However, that might not necessarily be the case, or at least not to the extent that it seems. 

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10) CU & Clock-Speeds 

The PS5 has 36 CU’s (compute units) at 2.23GHz. The Xbox Series X has 52CU at 1.82 GHz. Mark Cerny has said that he always prefers a higher clock speed, reason why they decided to go for a lower number of CU, but at the much higher clock speed. We do believe that he does have a very valid point here. 

Think of CU as the cores of a CPU, as an analogy. While some applications, like 3D rendering for example, do prefer a high number of cores at a lower clock speed, games in general prefer a lower number of cores but at a much higher clock speed. Usually games don’t need more than 4 cores. Now this is a GPU not a CPU, so things are quite a bit different but, depending on how the games are optimised, a higher clock speed might be preferred in most cases, to a higher number of compute units. So, while the Xbox Series X does look much more powerful, the gap might be much smaller than it looks. 

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11) Xbox Series X SSD

Will less, turn out to be more?

Also, the SSD speed for the Xbox Series X is 2.4GB/s which while still fast, the PS5 has more than twice the speed in their SSD, which could not only mean that games will load noticeably faster on the PS5 but like we mentioned before, developers can also use the SSD on the PS5 as RAM, to some extent. This is quite a bit more difficult to do on the Xbox. 

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12) Faster CPU 

CPU wise, we finally know the frequency. We now have an AMD CPU, a Ryzen 3rd gen, based on AMD’s Zen 2 x86-64 architecture. Also, we have 8 cores at 3.5GHz. While this is a pretty big improvement over the PS4’s 1.6GHz 8-core AMD Jaguar processor, the Xbox Series X does indeed have a clear advantage in the CPU department, thanks to a 3.8GHz processor, compared to 3.5GHz on the PS5. 

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13) RDNA2 

But, the PS5 does indeed come with AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture (same as the Xbox), which isn’t even out yet for PC. This is AMD’s most advanced GPU architecture, which should hit stores by the end of this year. 

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14) Legacy Modes 

Something pretty awesome in terms of the PS5, are the Legacy Modes. Essentially, the PS5’s GPU can turn off some of the Compute Units and the Clock Speeds, in order to make it essentially identical to a PS4 & PS4 Pro. This means that many PS4 games will be natively supported at launch.

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15) Backwards Compatibility 

Speaking of this, Mark Cerny said that they tested the top 100 PS4 games and most of them were playable on the PS5, at launch. Without any updates at all required by the developers. That is great, however it does seem like not all the games will work, but a good majority of them should. Of course, if developers do release updates to their games, PS4 games will run at an even higher Resolution and Frame-Rate on the PS5 hardware. 

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16) Ray Tracing

Just one example of what RTX will bring to Next-Gen Consoles.

Probably one of the biggest new features of the PS5 will be Ray-Tracing. Long story short, this will allow for some significantly improved Lightning, Shadows, Reflections and even Audio will be ray-traced. All of this would make the Graphics and the sound look way more realistic than anything we’ve seen up until this point. 

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17) Video Memory 

Video Memory is also a very important aspect of the next generation of consoles. Mark Cerny has now confirmed that the PS5 will come with 16GB of GDDR6 memory, up from the 8GB of GDDR5 memory that we had on the PS4. Some of this is used for the OS as RAM, some for games and we’ll go through this and how it comes with the Xbox Series X, in a future video. Lots of interesting things to cover there so do make sure that you’re subscribed. 

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18) Memory Bandwidth 

Aside from the amount of Video Memory itself, the Memory Bandwidth is also extremely important. We now have 448GB/s of bandwidth, up from 176GB/s, which is a gigantic upgrade. 

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19) Advanced API’s and Tools

Sony will be giving developers a few API’s and tools that will make a big impact on their games. We have a new Geometry Engine, we have Primitive Shaders, which are essentially a heavily improved version of the Shaders that we have now. Long story short, a higher resolution on 3D textures (rocks and bumps in roads etc). These will look much more realistic on the PS5. Primitive Shaders aren’t something that developers need to use out of the gate, but if they choose to, they can take full advantage of them and heavily improve the realism in games. 

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20) Cooling System 

Now, one of the mean new features of the PS5, will be its cooling system. We’ve all seen those insane looking Dev-Kits, we were actually the first to reveal the 1st image of an actual Dev-Kit that got sent to us. 

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21) Design

Mark Cerny did say that they have made a very special cooling system, and thanks to the many reports that we’ve seen that claimed that the cooling system is an extremely expensive component for Sony, it is quite likely we would see a design similar to the DevKit or at least the 2nd leak that we got. This could quite possibly be something that implements a V-shaped cooling system and still has a modern design.

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22) Tempest Engine 

We got a taste of 3D Audio with the PS4, but Sony are really pushing the boat out for the PS5

Mark Cerny did indeed talk a lot about their new Tempest Engine. Essentially, what this is, is a single Compute Unit dedicated for the new Audio Engine. We would be getting 3D Audio at the hardware level. This means, that no matter what headphones you have, you would be getting 3D audio, just like you used to on the PS4 with Sony’s 1st party 3D headphones. Not only that, but Sony is currently working on optimising the Tempest Engine for speakers as well as sound-bars, in order to be able to provide 3D audio, even if you’re not wearing headphones. This is unfortunately much more difficult to do, but to some extent at least, it is doable. 

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23) Release Date 

If you’re wondering when the PS5 is getting released, this will indeed be by the end of the year. We have had many leaks saying that the actual release date would be in mid-November. 

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24) Price

Price-wise Sony hasn’t said anything about the PS5, but this is expected to cost $500 in the US.

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25) Selling at a Loss 

However, because of the sheer amount of high end components that Sony is packing into the PS5, we’ve seen reports that they are really struggling with the price. In fact, Sony might even have to sell the PS5 at a loss at first, in order to sell it at that $500 price point that many consumers would buy. They will be making their revenue back from the actual sales of games but, when it comes to the actual hardware, they might be at a loss.

PS5 & Xbox Series X – The Next Generation of Games!

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Welcome back to the ultimate comparison between the PS5 and the Xbox Series X, based on everything that we know so far. We uploaded PART 1 of this comparison back in January. In that video, we talked about the CPU differences, the GPU, the Resolution, the Frame-Rate and the in-game Graphics.

This is PART 2 of that comparison, and here we will be covering the RAM, the SSD  and any Special Features that both of these consoles will come with, alongside any other recent leaks since our last video.

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It seems like the Xbox Series X will be a bit more powerful than the PS5. The CPU will be pretty much identical between the two, but the GPU will be slightly more powerful on the Xbox. The Series X would have around 12.2 TFLOPS of raw GPU performance, compared to around 9.2 TFLOPS on the PS5. These are the calculations that DigitalFoundry made based on the recent AMD APU leaks from a few weeks prior, this will very likely be the case with the final unit. 

However, this is mostly because Microsoft will have two models of the Xbox, the low-end ‘Lockhart’ and the high-end ‘Scarlett’ (which will be more expensive than the PS5).

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RAM

The Xbox Series X may dedicate more of its RAM to the OS than the PS5, but there’s still plenty left for developers to use.

Unlike PC’s where we have separate Video Memory (GDDR) and System Memory (DDR), consoles only have Video Memory, which the Operating System (OS) gets to use a chunk of. For example, on the PS4 Pro, we have 8GB of GDDR5 memory, out of which only 1GB is allocated to the OS, while the remaining 7GB are used by games. On the Xbox One X, we have 12GB of GDDR5 memory, out of which 3GB are used for the OS and 9GB are usable by developers, in games. When it comes to next-gen, both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X are said to come with 24GB of GDDR6 memory. 

When it comes to how much of this 24GB of GDDR5 memory would be dedicated to the OS, and how much can actually be used by developers, we don’t yet know. It really depends on how both companies approach their new OS on the next-gen consoles. If both companies follow a similar approach to the PS4 and the Xbox One, then Sony should have less memory dedicated to the OS, compared to Microsoft. So developers should have more to play with, in terms of video memory, with the PS5. 

In terms of the bandwidth, the Xbox Series X is said to have 560GB/s vs around 512GB/s on the PS5. 

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Storage

Moving on to the storage, this will actually be the third massive change that the next-gen consoles will be getting, aside from the new CPU and GPU.

The current generation of consoles use plain old HDD’s. Yes, 5400RPM Hard-Drives, which we don’t really even see in laptops anymore, unless you’re looking at the lowest entry models. The HDD inside the current generation consoles only reach speeds of around 50-75MB/s, which is very slow. SSD’s, on the other hand, can reach speeds of up to 550MB/s but are limited by the SATA connector. While m.2 based Flash Storage can reach speeds of more than 3500MB/s. 

Luckily, both Sony & Microsoft have confirmed that the next-gen consoles will both be using Flash Storage. Yes, not even SATA based SSD’s, but m.2 based Flash modules that can reach some insane speeds.

Mark Cerny, the Lead System Architect for the PS5, said in a recent interview with ‘The Wired’, that the PS5 will have a storage module that has higher bandwidth than any SSD’s available on PC’s at the moment, which is very interesting. In that famous Spider-Man game demo, a scene that took 15 seconds to load on a PS4 Pro, only took 0.8 seconds with the PS5’s new storage (18.75 times faster). However, if we take the PS4 Pro’s HDD speed, which is about 75MB/s, and multiply that by 18.75, we get 1406MB/s. This is much faster than a SATA based SSD, so this is indeed an NVMe Flash Module, but nowhere near as fast as other flash modules that can reach speeds of over 3500MB/s. Still, it’s a massive improvement over what we currently have now.

Credit: Takashi Mochizuki

In another Spider-Man demo, Sony showed how fast you can actually swing through New York on the PS5 version of the game compared to the PS4 Pro version of the game. The PS4 Pro version ends up freezing once Spidey reaches a certain speed as the HDD simply cannot load the game assets fast enough, while the PS5’s Flash module has zero problems. So, with this new type of storage, not only will the games load up pretty much instantly, you will also be able to achieve much higher speeds in games where…you know…speed is important. For example, games such as Gran Turismo, Wipeout, or any other games that feature a ton of fast moving scenes, will feel so much more immersive with the next-gen consoles. Especially once you keep in mind that 60fps would be the standard with the next gen consoles and both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X will also support 120Hz output. 

We have seen a few reports that Samsung would be supplying Sony with their NVMe drives, to be used in the PS5.  Samsung did have an internal presentation and one slide did get leaked. We can see that they’re teasing their new generation of NVMe Flash modules that would apparently be used in 2020 consoles. We can also see how the system boot time drops from 49 seconds to around 9 seconds, this would be 5.44 times faster, which looks to be quite low for a Flash module.

So then why did Sony say that their drivers will have a higher bandwidth than SSD’s modules in PC’s today? Well, they were either referring to SATA based SSD where the bandwidth is indeed limited by the SATA connector or they might have been referring to the fact that their drivers would be using PCIe 4.0. This is something that AMD’s current Zen 2 platform supports and that’s where we’ve also first seen PCIe 4 introduced to the market.

Microsoft will also be doing something similar, they talked about this when they first unveiled Project Scarlett.  It will feature custom made Flash storage, something miles over what we currently have. A recent leak gives us a bit more insight into the Xbox Series X’s Flash module. A former Phison employee posted a description of his former job, on LinkedIn and it seems like we was working on a specific DRAM-less controller for the Flash module inside the Xbox Series X.

Check out @zoneofconcepts on Instagram for more behind the scenes content on our videos.

Judging by these specs, the Xbox Series X will only be able to achieve PCIe 3.0 speeds, rather than the 4.0 speeds that Sony are working towards. But, it’s extremely unlikely that Sony will be using drives with read speeds of 6500MB. So even if Sony will indeed support higher bandwidth storage, the Flash modules inside both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X will likely be very similar. 

Something pretty cool that you’ll be able to do storage-wise on the PS5, is that you will be able to uninstall certain aspects of the game. So games will be made in such a way so that if you want to only install the campaign, you can do that and then once you’ve finished it, you can uninstall it and install the multiplayer part of the game. This will let you save up a ton of storage. Not only that, but the games themselves will actually occupy less. On the current generation of consoles, because of how slow the HDD’s are, a lot of the games actually had to store multiple copies of textures so that the HDD could load the data from them faster. This won’t be required anymore, with the next gen consoles and so games, at least at launch, will occupy less.

We’ve heard a lot about Sony’s production costs and how material scarcity may end up affecting the RRP, what price do you think the PS5 will launch at?

And speaking of launch, PSErebus (a leaker who’s been very accurate in the past) stated that the PS5 will come with a 2TB SSD and a retail price of $500, 500 euros or £450. That’s pretty impressive! If Sony does indeed ship the PS5 with 2TB of storage, then this would be the dream. We don’t know anything in terms of the storage on the Xbox Series X just yet, but considering that the Series X is expected to cost more, around $600 for the high-end model, it should come with at least as much storage as the PS5 does.

Sony has confirmed that PS5 games will ship on new 100GB Blu-Ray disks and yes, for those of you who are wondering, Blu-Ray drivers are much slower than even a regular HDD, with read speeds of just around 25MB/s. So, with the PS5 and Xbox Series X, the games would not be run from the Blu-Ray disks anymore The only use case for the Blu-Ray disks would be to copy the game direct to your console, as opposed to downloading it from the online store. This is useful if your internet connection is slow and you will also be able to sell the games this way. The Blu-Ray drive will still be required to be inserted into the console, for licensing purposes. 

Since the next-gen consoles will rely so much on the internal storage, even games will make full use of this faster storage by enabling a seamless open-world with no loading times at all,  both consoles may heavily limit the use of external storage use. At the moment, you can plug in an external HDD or SSD and expand the internal storage that way. It’s a pretty easy and straight-forward process.  However, with next-gen, it’s very likely that we would either have First-Party storage modules, or the Third-Party external storage options would need to surpass a certain speed threshold in order for them to be used. Our guess is that only external SSD and m.2 drives will be usable.

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Special Features

Finally, the last thing that we want to cover here, is the special features that both of these consoles will have.

RTX is going to be a real game-changer for next-gen consoles and thankfully, it will be on both.

Both Sony and Microsoft have confirmed that the next gen consoles will support hardware based Ray-Tracing. In case you don’t know that Ray-Tracing is, it is pretty much the key selling feature of Nvidia’s RTX series of GPU’s. Real-Time Ray tracing is the most realistic way of casting shadows and reflections in games. This is because, unlike regular reflection and shadow mapping which are always fixed, Ray Tracing involves each light ray being individually cast and reflected to light up a scene, resulting in extremely photo-realistic environments. This might not sound like much but it will make a massive difference in-game.

Additionally, each of the consoles will have some unique features to them. The Xbox Series X will have Microsoft’s Project xCloud, which will essentially turn your Xbox into a server that you’ll be able to access from pretty much any device and play your games, a little like Playstation Remote. Another new feature of the Xbox will be a Windows Mode, according to some recent leaks. This would allow you to access Steam and the Epic Games Store and play PC games directly from there. As Mouse & Keyboard are fully supported, the Xbox Series X will be closer to a PC than a console.  Also, Microsoft has already confirmed that all the Series X “Exclusives” will also work on PC, so the Series X won’t have any console exclusives games. That’s pretty much it in terms of the Xbox. Microsoft hasn’t really talked about any other new and exclusive features. On the PS5 side however, we do get quite a few unique features.

We can already get 3D Audio on the PS4, how much better will it be on the PS5?

For one, Sony has teased 3D Audio quite a lot. They said that this will make a massive difference as to how games are perceived and that the PS5 will even have a hardware based 3D Audio Chip that will handle all the 3D Audio processing. Now, there are a few First-Party headphones from Sony,  which do support 3D audio on the PS4 already and we happen to own a pair. They’re very good, but from the looks of it, this 3D Audio chip should take audio to the next level. Something else that Sony will have is next-gen haptics on the controller itself. Sony has already confirmed that the haptics in the new controller will be so good, that you will be able to feel the surface that a car in a game is driving on. So you will be able to feel the difference between asphalt, dirt, grass and so on. And lastly, the PS5 will support both the current PSVR as well as the upcoming PSVR 2. Microsoft has already confirmed that they won’t be doing a VR headset for the Xbox Series X anytime soon, as Phil Spencer himself, the head of Xbox, said - “nobody’s asking for VR”. 

One last key thing to mention here is that both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X will support Backwards Compatibility in games. The PS5 supporting PS4 games with rumors of this going all of the way back to the PS1. While the Xbox Series X will support Xbox One games as well as Xbox 360 games.

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Conclusion

In the end, both consoles are going to be light years ahead of even the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X so no matter which one you get, you’ll be extremely happy. The Xbox will offer slightly better specs and PC game compatibility, while the PS5 will offer things such as Haptic Rumble on the controller and VR support. Also, Microsoft will be offering two models of the Xbox, a low-end and a high-end, while Sony will only offer one, the PS5. 

Phil Spencer might think the console war with Sony is over, but who’s he kidding? 

Which one are you getting?