There is no better time to get into video games than now. Yes, the costs may seem a bit daunting but it is worth considering what your money is buying you when you decide to buy one of these gaming machines. Sure, you could focus on gaming on a PC but buying a console eliminates any worry about hardware compatibility or worry over your graphics card. You just put the game into the machine or download it to the hard drive and you are good to go.
Since there are multiple consoles on the market, this article is intended to serve as a summary of the systems offered by the Big Three of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo so that you can have a better idea of which is best for your needs. While you will not find technical specifications below, any notable exclusives will be mentioned under the relevant sections.
PlayStation 5
Often shortened to the "PS5," this console is Sony's latest machine. While the PS5 has quite a few exclusives to its name, it also supports a PS4 mode to play the robust catalog of titles from the PlayStation 4 console. Notable exclusives include:
- Final Fantasy 7 Intergrade
- Astro's Playroom
- Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
- Horizon: Forbidden West
- God of War
- spider-Man: Miles Morales
- Demon Souls.
One notable factor that anyone looking to invest in a PS5 should be aware of is how they want to implement their games onto the machine. The PS5 console comes in two forms, one with a disc drive and the other without, marketed as the "Digital Edition." While a disc-free experience should be no problem for someone living in a city, with reliable access to an internet connection to download games from, people in rural environments with poor internet, or who prefer a physical manifestation of their games, are probably better served with the disc drive version. That having been said, the digital edition is $100 less to purchase.
X Box Series X
Released in November 2020, the Series X is Microsoft's newest iteration of its gaming hardware. This system supports up to 8k resolution on its graphics output, not that any games are yet on the market that can capitalize on that feature, and the presence of a solid state hard drive keeps loading times to an unnervingly short amount of time. If you happen to have been a past supporter of the Xbox brand, even the massive black brick that was just called "Xbox," the Series X offers full backwards compatibility with all games from prior generations of Xbox hardware, even those that relied upon the Kinect motion sensor peripheral.
Other than offering backwards-compatibility with all ancestor Xbox titles, the biggest offering of this console would be its Xbox Game Pass. This one monthly subscription service gives unlimited access to over 100 titles. If you happen to be a fan of titles made by Bethesda, such as "The Elder Scrolls" or "Fallout," it seems that the Xbox Series X will be the only console to play their future installments.
Nintendo Switch
As a contemporary of the PS4 and Xbox One, the Switch is the oldest of these three consoles, hitting the market in March of 2017. Since it has been around for a while, the Switch is cheaper and has far more games than the prior two systems mentioned in this article. Some of those notable exclusives include:
- Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Mario Odyssey
- Mario Kart
- Metroid Dread.
There are technically three models of Switch on the market.
- The original.
- An OLED version, with a bigger screen.
- The "Switch Lite."
While the original and OLED versions are hybrid devices that can be taken on the go or stored in a screen-connected dock, the Lite model is a portable only device with internally housed "Joy-Cons." One major concern with the Switch concerns these proprietary "Joy-Con" controllers; when the analog sticks are used often enough, the internals can become skewed, resulting in a well-known issue known as "Joy-Con drift." The only known solution to Joy-Con drift is to send the faulty machines to Nintendo for replacement.
