Sony Playstation 5 unveil: How does it fare against the Xbox Series X?

There is much to unpack from Sony’s unveil of the Playstation 5: From its adoption of Ultra HD Blu-Ray to its upcoming games catalogue and the promise of new gaming experiences made possible by its solid state drive (SSD).

But, much like when Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Cyber Truck, the discussion has so far been focussed on the outrageous new design. The design of the PS5 is unlike that any console Sony has previously released. If the Xbox Series X chose to take a bland design direction for its design (opting for a straight-up box look), the PS5 has taken the opposite approach, giving the PS5 a snazzy white blazer.

From the front, it resembles a suit. From other angles, a WiFi router. Like any good product unveil, the design was good enough to get social media abuzz with memes about the new look.

But what stands out from the console—and that could prove a game-changer—is the solid state drive that Sony promises will eliminate loading times.

Using the upcoming Ratchet and Clank title as an example, Sony says, “players will seamlessly travel through different dimensions in mid-gameplay, thanks to PS5’s ultra-high speed SSD.” The footage showed the titular hero Ratchet seamlessly jumping through different ‘dimensions’ in the game—something that was not easily done earlier, as new backdrops require new map assets to be loaded rapidly at speeds not possible with internal hard drives.

While the capacities of gaming consoles has increased significantly over the generations, their use of Hard Disk Drives meant that game assets could only be accessed up to a certain speed, even as the CPU and GPU grew capable of handling much larger files.

The PS5 will not be the only ninth-generation (tentative name) console to feature an SSD—the Xbox Series X will also have one (leading to a developer saying the rapid boot time made it difficult to design a loading screen because the console started so quickly).

While much of the footage shown at the PS5 unveil was of trailers, an example of gameplay footage can be seen in the Unreal Engine 5 feature highlights released in May, showing in-game footage generated from a PS5.

The PS5 has much in common with the Xbox Series X—both will be powered by a 8-core AMD Zen 2 processors. However, on paper, the Xbox seems to have the advantage, with its cores making 3.8 GHz and the PS5’s making 3.5GHZ. Likewise, the Xbox Series X GPU ios capable of generating up to 12 TFLOPs with 52 Compute Units (1.8 Ghz) while the PS5 can put out 10.28 TFLOPS with 36 Compute Units (2.23 GHz). Both consoles will have 16GB of DDR6 RAM.

The PS5’s edge comes courtesy its M.2 NVMe SSD, which promises to offer unparalleled speed.

Grand Theft Auto V makes its obligatory appearance—giving the title its third incarnation across three generations of consoles; appearing first on the PS3, then again as an enhanced version on the PS4 and soon as an even-more-enhanced offering on the PS5.

Other games announced for the PS5 include Horizon Forbidden West, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Demon’s Souls, Gran Turismo 7, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Returnal, Destruction All Stars and Astro’s Playroom.