Home » Technology » PlayStation 5 vs. Xbox Series Preview – A lot of hardware for your money

PlayStation 5 vs. Xbox Series Preview – A lot of hardware for your money

The cards have been shuffled; Microsoft and Sony have released all the details about their next-gen consoles. Now that we know what they cost and when they are in stores, we put them together again. At the beginning of this year we already looked extensively at the technology behind the new console generation; now we dive deeper into the strategy with which the two tech giants are trying to sell their new consoles.

Vier next-genconsoles

No fewer than four new consoles will appear in November. Yet there are only two manufacturers who enter the battlefield. In previous generations, the introduction of new consoles almost always consisted of one model. At most, there were differences in the size of the storage space. During the current generation, that changed with the introduction of the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X. Sony and Microsoft released more powerful variants with those consoles, with support for higher resolutions, while games continued to work on the earlier models.

Microsoft is immediately pursuing that strategy with the new console generation. The Xbox Series X is the top model aimed at playing games in 4k and the Series S is a smaller and much cheaper variant, which can play the same games at up to 1440p resolution. To further cut costs and direct buyers towards Microsoft’s own online store and subscriptions, the disk drive has also been omitted.

Sony takes a more traditional approach. There are two versions of the PlayStation 5, but both consoles are equally powerful and have the same hardware and chassis. The only difference is that the Digital Edition has no disc tray and is 100 euros cheaper.

Console Xbox Series X Xbox Series S PlayStation 5 PlayStation 5
Digital Edition
Processor 8 custom Zen 2-cores met smt 8 custom Zen 2-cores met smt 8 custom Zen 2-cores met smt 8 custom Zen 2-cores met smt
CPU speed 3,8GHz (3,66GHz met smt) 3,6GHz (3,4GHz met smt) 3,5GHz (variabel) 3,5GHz (variabel)
Bulletin 1TB, ‘custom NVMe-PCIe 4.0-ssd’ 512GB, ‘custom NVMe-PCIe 4.0-ssd’ 825GB, ‘custom PCIe 4.0-ssd’ 825GB, ‘custom PCIe 4.0-ssd’
SSD speed 2,4GB/s (raw), 4,8GB/s (compressed) 2,4GB/s (raw), 4,8GB/s (compressed) 5,5GB/s (raw), 9GB/s (compressed) 5,5GB/s (raw), 9GB/s (compressed)
Storage extension 1TB ssd extension (proprietary) 1TB ssd extension (proprietary) Selected NVMe SSDs Selected NVMe SSDs
Gpu 52 compute-units 1825MHz 20 compute-units
1565MHz
36 compute-units 2,23GHz (variabel) 36 compute-units 2,23GHz (variabel)
GPU architecture Custom RDNA 2 Custom RDNA 2 Custom RDNA 2 Custom RDNA 2
GPU computing power 12,15Tflops 4Tflops 10,28Tflops 10,28Tflops
Target resolution and fps 4k @ 60fps
Maximum 120fps
1440p@60fps
Maximum 120fps
4k @ 60fps
Maximum 120fps
4k @ 60fps
Maximum 120fps
Memory 16GB GDDR6, 320bit 10GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6, 256bit 16GB GDDR6, 256bit
Memory speed 10GB @ 560GB/s
6GB @ 336GB/s
8GB @ 224Gbit/s
2GB @ 56GB/s
448GB/s 448GB/s
Nutrition 315W? Unknown 350W 340W
Discdrive Ultra HD Blu-ray No Ultra HD Blu-ray No
Connection HDMI 2.1 HDMI 2.1 HDMI 2.1 HDMI 2.1
MSRP 500 euro 300 euro 500 euro 400 euro
Release date 10 november 10 november 19 november 19 november

Lots of hardware for your money

When the specifications of the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5 were announced at the beginning of this year, high prices were feared because of the impressive hardware. With introductory prices around 500 euros, the next-gen consoles are not cheap, but also not more expensive than the consoles of the previous generation when they were introduced. The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 came out at the end of 2013 with introductory prices of 500 and 400 euros respectively.

The new consoles offer a lot of hardware for your money. If you would click together a somewhat similar gaming PC in the Pricewatch, you would easily end up with double the amount. An AMD Ryzen octacore processor and a 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD alone cost around 500 euros. A fair cost comparison cannot be made because consoles use very specific hardware; the processor and video card, for example, are combined in one chip. However, it is likely that Sony and Microsoft initially make a loss on the consoles. The manufacturers hope to earn back this with the sale of games and subscriptions.

Xbox Series X-hardware
The guts of the Xbox Series X

Market share Xbox versus PlayStation

The fact that Microsoft comes with the cheapest next-gen console is easy to explain if you look at the current market share of home consoles. Sony reported in August in its quarterly figures that more than 112 million copies of the PlayStation 4 have been sold to date. Microsoft has not provided figures on Xbox sales for years, but according to unofficial ones figures that VGChartz tracks, some 48 million Xbox One consoles have been sold. Figures showed in 2018 EA announced that there were 2.5 times more copies of the PlayStation 4 on the market at the time than Xbox One consoles.

Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do and the competitively priced Xbox Series S will be an important asset in this. A console’s right to exist is largely linked to its market share. The more consoles that are sold, the larger the market for games is and the more attractive it is to make large budgets available to make those games.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.