The Besties - PS5 vs. Xbox Series X: We Pick a Winner!

Episode Date: July 8, 2020

In honor of National Video Game Day, The Besties decide the best new console of 2020: the PlayStation 5 vs. Xbox Series X! Using a highly advanced voting system they weighed the tech specs, upcoming video game releases, pricing, and announce their winner. May the best console win. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I just got a 3D printer, and I don't want to brag, but I now have the means of production in my own house. I'm very excited about that. I know we're about to talk about all the big video game consoles, but I've been thinking, I have a 3D printer. I could just make my own, huh? My own next-gen Griff Station 6. How many flops is the Griff Station 6 capable of producing?

None, but we don't fuck with that. That's not important to us. We have a more holistic approach to gaming it's um it's full of marbles the grift station six yeah um and you can smash it to the ground the marbles come out and then you have to go pick them all up what is the launch game for the grift station six your arms launching the grift station six high into the air so that it smashes to the ground and all the marbles come out. You have to collect them before your son finds them. It's called Marble Madness.

So Arms is, you're saying Arms is on your console. Arms, Arms, console is on my arms, is what I'm saying. Fair enough. It's going to cost $600. Wow. Okay, fair. They are nice marbles. They're very good marbles.

My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best console of the 8th generation. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best console that's going to come out maybe sometime. Beep, boop, beep. My name Chris Plant, the X-Bot. Beep, boop, beep, beep, beep. Oh, no. My name is Russ Frushing, and I know the best console of the year. Okay. Okay. Justin. Okay. know my name is russ and i know the best console of the year okay okay okay well

welcome to the besties where we profile the latest and greatest in uh electronic entertainment uh the console wars are heating up i don't know that i'm ready for this the console wars are heating up as as the playstation so hold on i'm gonna do this. The console wars are heating up as the PlayStation.

Hold on. I'm going to do this in the style of a CNN anchor. The console wars are heating up again. The Sony PlayStation gets ready to launch the latest and greatest box of the PlayStation 5, it's called. But right behind is Bill Gates' Microsoft with Xbox. I think here it says Scorpion 1 Project 1X. And these two are going to be battling out for the quarters of local teens. And these bad boys have come a long way since Pac-Man.

Take it away, Victor. I've asked my dipshit nephew which one of these boxes he's going to play Fork Knife on. you which one of these boxes he's gonna play fork knife on uh we should mention in this very special episode where we're gonna be uh duking uh ps5 versus xbox series x we will decide a winner spoiler warning we're going to decide the winner of the console wars and we're going to settle them here have peace in our time there will be no need for console wars after this because we're going to pick the winner we're going to call the losing company and tell them cancel your box like fuck don't even worry about it you don't have to waste your time with it how should we set how should we uh how should we organize our thoughts because there's a lot okay there is a lot to talk about there is so i so i've sort of uh broken this

show down into several sections topics if you will and why don't we just start with the stuff that everyone came for? The raw motherfucking specs, y'all. This show is going to be so stupid. The whole product. Well equipped to handle these specs. What's the price? That's number one. That's the biggest thing.

That's another section entirely. I'm just talking about the CPU and its old friend, the GPU. You want to know about the gizmos? You want to know about the Seep and the Jeep? Oh, bud, let me tell you. We'll talk some RAM, too, if you want. Do you mind if I share some of this stuff? Go for it.

Are you going to say a number? This is a fun Taskmaster segment. Can we get. Are you going to say a number? I don't, can we get through, this is a fun like Taskmaster segment. Can we get through this segment without saying a single number? No. The whole point is the silly numbers.

Okay, I don't know what a teraflop is and I'm not ashamed to fucking admit it. That's the point. Well, but I know what a teraflop is. Oh yeah,

you want to explain it? Can I do this? I actually had to write, I had to write this piece in 2016 for Polygon about what a terrible flop is. Go for it, Justin. Okay, so a flop is a floating point operations per second. So a floating point operation is a number with a decimal point in it,

which is harder to work with than integers that don't have a decimal. So this sort of graphics processing, processing these floating points is a way of measuring computer power. In terms of graphics processing, it means the computations are used to draw polygons and move them around on the screen so

the more flops you have or teraflops is a trillion flops the more teraflops you have the more of these operations you're able to yeah how many math problems can you crank out in a second basically that is a very long way of saying a bigger teraflop is good. But not necessarily, which is the thing that we're going to talk about. This is why I can't fucking hang. I know. So, okay. So, very quick.

The PS5, we're going to talk about the CPU and the GPU. CPU, the computing, GPU, the graphics. PS5, 8-core, 3.5 gigahertz,d zen 2 that sounds pretty good sounds pretty good right sounds that sounds pretty good xbox series x eight core 3.8 gigahertz amd zen 2 that's 0.3 gigahertz now let's talk about the gs because this one's going to really knock your socks off. PlayStation 5, 10.3 teraflops. Whoa. AMD, RDNA, two, right? I mean, that's double digits. They broke that 10 teraflop limit.

They broke it. People have been trying for years. No one's going to get higher than that. Xbox. Xbox One X has six teraflops. 10.3. Yeah. Xbox Series X, six teraflops so point three yeah xbox series x 12 teraflop amd rdna two oh my gosh and and here's the best part about all of it it all comes down to how well optimized

the actual system infrastructure in the games are so it's kind of how they use it it doesn't matter okay here's here's i would like to condense this as much as possible because i thought a lot about this the xbox series x hypothetically has more computing power on the cpu and gpu side right like you can clock it to a higher speed on paper right there's no telling if developers are actually going to like take advantage of that there's no telling like plan said how good the infrastructure the architecture of the system is going to be the playstation 5's uh strength is its custom solid state drive uh which if you're not in no is a different type of hard drive than uh a a typical hard drive that has you know actual like spinning fucking parts inside of it it is it loads uh magnitudes faster right

uh that is to me when i built my own pc that was the biggest change more than any graphical thing is once you put in a solid state drive the access speed of specifically nvme solid state drive right sony's is technically not nvme it's their own version it is their own custom thing and that is the benefit that they have is that it has a actually significantly higher read speed than the Xbox Series X, right? No, we don't. We don't know that. That's actually maybe not true because the Xbox Series X is using NVMe, which is also

wildly fast. The whole point of this, I can actually just, we can just really wrap this section pretty quickly. These consoles are nearly identical. And until we actually see them in the world there's really no assumption that any one of them is better in either category um that's absolutely unacceptable for what we're doing here sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry the numbers are bigger xbox wins the numbers i want to mention one more quick thing about this so in the last generation when the ps4 launched against the xbox one the ps4 was able to do more tower flops than the xbox one

and if you'll remember there were versions of like assassin's creed black flag that ran better on the ps4 the difference in terror flops was like i want to say 30 to 40 percent it was like a significant jump uh between uh the power levels whereas this is a lot closer so while the xbox series x obviously wins because bigger numbers the difference as plant said is very small so i've got a bigger hard drive just saying well that i think that's why sony has focused so much on their custom solid state drive technology and that's why all the demos that you see is like, here's a Spider-Man and there's literally no load screens. I think that that is gonna be the most obvious change

when you kip up to the next- God of War had no load screens. That happened last gen. Well, it had fucking, you walk around on magic tree branches. Yeah. PlayStation 5 loses to Xbox in that. Is anyone else super worried about hard drive space?

Because right now I have Call of Duty Modern Warfare installed on my computer and it is 200 gigs. Yeah, it's wild. What are we going to do? I went to the extent of like plugging in a external hard drive to my Xbox One, which I, there's one of these you can't do that. No, no, no. You may not be able to do that with these, right? They both have expandable memory bays they both do but also complicated because the playstation 5's custom ssd it's 825 gigs why is it that number because the number of the gigs actually

is tied into the very specific design of this ssd so i don't know how clear it is that like the expansions will be taking advantage of this. My guess is that it'll be something similar to what you can do with SSDs on your computer, where you can have information switching between the good one and the backup one, where with Xbox Series X I think they're going to have effectively little candy bars that you can slot

into the thing to expand the memory. Okay. Xbox won the stats round congrats let's talk about the let's talk about design the xbox series x is a big black obelisk and that's like it's a big perfect rectangular shape and it's a heat box it's got like a third of it is a heat sink so like if that means that it is not going to uh scream like the tunnel of a bullet train like then that's great for me i don't it could be the size of my

fucking kitchen if it doesn't go like every other game console i have in my fucking house right now peachy loving that that's great uh it's boring as fuck but but like, whatever. The PlayStation 5 looks like, it looks like a building from Killzone. Yes. It looks like a soccer trophy. It's sort of a black router shape flanked by these two beautiful white folded in wings. Or like if Activision tried to design portal and they

made the robots in portal and they're like how do we make it look slicker and meaner yes uh yeah i think it i it depends on what you like right if you like uh no that where there is no room for subjectivity in what we are doing i am more excited by the playstation 5 shape i already have absolutely obviously i already have a big, rectangular gaming PC in my house. I totally disagree. Okay. Yeah. I have plenty of big, boring gaming PCs in my house,

and I'm happy to have another one because it means that it will actually vanish into the distance, and I won't have to stare at the fact that I have this dumb blue glowing white ice cream sandwich can I ask you an unrelated question why are you so fucking embarrassed at being a gamer my big cue that's my cue because I want people to know that yeah oh yes ladies he games I want everybody it is just fascinating to me that like these companies like really forced some level of interior design on the people that just want to play their games like why why does the box need

to look like that i guess it's a marketing thing but i'm used to it for my kids they'll take 30 seconds to draw a flower and they'll hang up on my wall for three fucking years it's not in my hands anymore it's out of my hands looking at the the playstation vibe because it really is this these two uh white boards uh you know containing the the actual console what if you could buy liveries for it that disguised you know decals that disguised it so then if you were embarrassed of being a gamer you could just get like a monster energy drink livery that just covers it makes it look like a giant monster energy drink can and then you just like you like you know you like extreme sports sure yeah well couldn't i just turn it into like a compas a comcast cable box like that would be oh that would be a very good design that would be good uh it's kind of reminds me of the 360

uh wood face plates you'll be like what's that it's like, what's that? It's like, it's a wooden Xbox. My papaw made it for me during the big war. It's, it's, the Xbox puts me to sleep, but also, if that shape makes it be quiet,

then it's the sexiest fucking. This is old school. I, my, I have a problem imagining both of these on the shelf. I actually don't know

if the shelf where I currently have my Xbox One would fit this thing. Yeah. I don't know if the shelf where I currently have my Xbox One would fit this thing. Yeah. I don't know how we come to a decision. I think it's Xbox because what we, it sounds like the PS5 is going to also be huge

so neither of them I think are going to fit underneath your TV or in the stand. So they're going to have to be sitting next to the TV stand and if it's sitting outside of that space it cannot look like, you know Yes it can, I like it, it looks like a And if it's sitting outside of that space, it cannot look like, you know, I like it.

It looks like a spaceship. It's fucking cool. PlayStation. I'm actually going to relent on this one because I've, I'm also hard pressed to imagine putting the PS five vertically or sorry, horizontally into my home. I don't actually know. I'm sure it would probably work.

It just looks bizarre uh to me and i can much why do they always have to put them no one's gonna do that i'm not gonna do that the images always have them on both of these are vertical and i think that that is weird i don't think anybody does that cool okay so i lose this one you lose but you lose that one or no more specifically i think you'll win the next one don't't worry. Yeah, this one's not, this is, okay. Yeah, so the next category is games that have been announced that we have seen. Here's what's weird about the launch window.

It is hard for me to conceptualize the launch window without a release date for the console. Two caveats here. It is unclear how many of these games are actually exclusive to the PS5 and won't also appear on PS4 or Xbox Series X to Xbox One and it is very unclear

when the hell any of these games are coming out it's very very strange PlayStation 5 let me run a list Spider-Man Miles Morales where did we land on that one is that a full game or is it like a side story it's like a lost legacy it's like a standalone smaller bite sized thing thing that's probably gonna be a lot uh sack boy a big

adventure which i don't media molecule is not involved in that that's that's it's not a little big planet game it's like a straight up platform with sack boy in it yes okay uh ratchet and clank drift apart we got grand turismo 7 astro's playroom, another in the Astro Bot sort of weird sub-genre, Returnal, which is like a Groundhog Day set in space, and then Horizon Forbidden West, which is the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn. Then some console exclusive, Bugsnax from Young Horses,

who made Octodad, is a console exclusive, although I'm sure it will be on PC also. Ghostwire Tokyo, which looks pretty cool. A new Oddworld game called Oddworld Soulstorm. And probably for me, the game I'm looking forward to the most is a remake of Demon's Souls, the sort of progenitor of the Souls genre.

Can we talk about that one really quick? My favorite thing with the Demon's Souls remake is this whole time, they do a big Sony PlayStation playstation 5 announcement they're like finally we have so much power we don't even know what to do with it finally with all this power we we are there are no boundaries to our imagination also we're releasing uh demon souls a game that you played on PS3, and it's going to come with a choice of performance or visual options. I'm looking forward to it.

I love the Souls games, but Demon's Souls, I don't think is held up as well. I'm more excited. That can be on any fucking console. I don't care about that in the context of it being on PlayStation. I just like, I love Souls games.

I think I'm mostly most excited about that because I don't think any of the xbox games really light my fire halo infinite which we've seen fuck all of uh except it was a man in a room a dude yeah we didn't even see yeah uh hellblade 2 uh scorn which one's scorn it's one of those like very goth like hr geeker type things that they showed at that one press yeah very little information about it uh rares everwild uh the new battle toads some of these are not even confirmed for xbox series x yet same with flight simulator we just assume that they will okay then a lot of these are you've written down rumored yeah dark i mean that is like the best we could do perfect dark it's rumored to come from the initiative, which is a new studio.

We do know that Playground Games is making a Fable game. We don't know much about it. Psychonauts 2, presumably now that Xbox owns Double Fine. That will be an exclusive. And then I included the new Yakuza because I just wanted to add some games. Like the new Yakuza almost certainly will come out on PS5. But hey, it's like the first time a new yakuza is coming out on xbox good for them so this is the weirdest maybe console launch i've ever experienced because there will be i think no games that only come out on the con the new console like even Spider-Man will probably come out on PS4. I don't think there's going to be any like PS5 only

or Xbox Series X only games happening this year, which is very bizarre. I think it's too soon to tell. Like, I don't know that. We know that for sure with Xbox Series X. Right. They've already said that everything is coming to PC. Halo Infinite, I believe, is...

They haven't confirmed confirmed, but I believe it's coming to Xbox One. So, yeah, it's weird in that way. I think PlayStation 5 gets it for me mostly because there's some of these that I'm looking forward to playing. There is no, I would say, killer app on this list except maybe Halo Infinite,

which maybe is fucking tight, but we haven't seen it or know anything about it it and i was thinking that that's kind of strange but right now i'm looking at the playstation 4 launch list and fuck me that was bad wow what a bunch of dookie i can't wait to play need for speed rivals on my playstation 4 reso gun is the only one on here that i look at and i'm like oh yeah that was pretty that's pretty cool this is gonna sound weird but i don't think they necessarily want to drive interest to like a fever pitch at the launch of these consoles. I think that they are going to release them, but if I had to guess, I would say that supply has been pretty severely restricted. And they don't necessarily want to create a situation where demand is massive and pent up and they have no supply.

I have the winner. It's the Nintendo Switch. It released with Breath of the Wild. Thank you. The best. They're good. Of these, it's Sony, right? I spoke for myself. The three of you, is there anything

on either of these lists that you see that and you're like, fuck yeah. Obviously, probably not Breath of the Wild level but something that you're like yeah i was gonna say i'm excited about horizon i mean i think i'm not like life-changingly excited but i think it'll be a very good game the last one was a very good game i very much love spider-man so and i think miles morales is a great character um they have a huge uh that that studio has a huge respect for Spider-Man and made it a really compelling story last time out

and I would love for it to open the door to a Spider-Verse game that would be fantastic do they have Shamik Moore is that his name? the guy who played Miles in the Spider-Verse movie I would not think so.

That may be, I don't know, that may be not where they're going with it. Okay, yes, PlayStation, I feel like, right? Yeah. Yes, I think PlayStation has the better, like, potential lineup right now. But again, it's so up in the air. We should also mention we're recording this at the beginning of July. Xbox is going to host an event later this month. I do not see that event probably probably

early august maybe early august because plant is on the pulse but i do not see that event necessarily vastly changing a lot of what we're talking about but who knows i could be wrong they could have some amazing uh little ace in the hole waiting for us so but before before we jump to break like let's cover the true scope of like what the fuck we don't know about these consoles because like release date price launch titles all that is extremely important for me like a huge deciding factor and the reason that i have pretty much i have not turned my xbox one on except to like play some connect games with henry uh is the architecture of the system or rather i should say like the ui of the system like actual the the ux of the user experience of the system i feel like still even after all these years suck shit on xbox

one uh while playstation 5 is like i know what the what i'm getting into and so like show me how that works like show me any it is it is it is wild to me how little we know about these things that are supposed to come out this year. The UI of both PlayStation 4 and Xbox are terrible. I had learned to be okay with the Xbox. And then recently I got a new Apple TV. And you know what? It turns out there's actually a way to design a thing where you can just click a button and then watch a movie. Or you can just use voice commands on a remote.

You can just like click a button and then like watch a movie or you can just use voice commands on a remote. Like I feel bad for Xbox because they ran so far away from the hey, just make a comfortable entertainment living room device. But the original ideas were good. The connector was just unnecessary. All I needed was a tiny little controller that I could hit the speaker button on and say, hey, show me the Chippendale popcorn episode in disney plus and it's like cool got it i know you love this one i got it already i actually buffered it for you because i know how you like to get nasty uh let's take a break and we'll come back with more discussion of uh these these these beautiful boxes know, you'll touch your console maybe once every few days,

but you, at least if you're like me, I always have my hands on my controllers, even when I'm not gaming. I bring them to dinner with my kids, just holding it in my pocket, knowing that I could get- Is that how you eat pasta with a controller? He wraps the noodles around each.

What are you talking? That wouldn't make any sense, Russ. No. I have it in a leather holster that I made. And I had the phrase Big Game and Papa burned into it. And it's faux leather. Don't worry.

I'm a conscientious, true gamer. Let's talk about the controllers. They both look pretty similar to the controllers we have now. I'd say the DualSense, is that what it's called? The new, yes, the DualSense is the new PlayStation 5 controller, is more convex than the PlayStation 4 controller, but I think that there is a similar sort of DNA in there. But the Xbox controller just looks like

an Xbox Elite series controller, which I have for my PC. I bought the Series 2 Xbox Elite controller, and it kicks ass, mostly, I think, because of the modularity of it. I play a lot of Destiny 2, and not having to do a full trigger pull, being able to customize stuff like that is really cool.

Is that confirmed for the new Xbox controller? They've said that there's tension adjustment, like the sticks and stuff like that will have tension to them. So if you wanted some friction, if you were pulling into a turn in a racing game, you would sort of feel that in the stick itself. And I believe that sort of functionality is in the stick itself um and i believe those that sort of functionality is in the triggers as well um so i think they are offering a lot of that stuff i don't think

they've confirmed back paddles for what it's worth which is obviously the back paddles are huge yeah which is weird that that it's not confirmed on the dual sense either right because they it's it's only strange to me because they went in that direction with the Xbox Elite controller. And I love those. Like, legitimately, for shooters, I refuse to do, what's it called? The, like, bumper grip for, like, bumper jumper. Claw grip. Yeah, or bumper jumper, which essentially, like, you don't have to take your hand off the right stick to hit the X button to jump. You can use the bumper to jump. Like, I'm never going to rewire my brain to do that.

But if you put the ABXY buttons on the back panels, like, then it actually is, like, actually very valuable. PlayStation released an attachment for the DualShock 4 controller that essentially does the same thing. So it's strange to me that, like, that's not a feature. I think it's an accessibility thing. I think for people that are not familiar with back paddles, picking up a controller that has them can be like a, whoa, what do I even do with this kind of moment? It also keeps price down for what it's worth so i don't know i like both i love the dual shock 4 controller i love the xbox series uh elite controller so like these both seem pretty similar to those yeah i would say the one feature that is standing out to me on the dual sense is

the idea that the mic is built in without needing a headset which is kind of interesting if there's a way to pull that off where people that you're playing with are not getting like speaker noise um i think that's a button noise right like your hand actually manipulating the controller i don't know how they i don't know how they get around that but yeah that's that's also cool um yeah i don't know i would say from a looks perspective like i already have a controller that looks fucking exactly like the Xbox, the new Xbox controller. So from, from that perspective, like I'll also, it is the same aesthetic on the dual sense as the console itself, right?

It's like the, the black core is flanked by these white wings, uh, with a big white touch pad in the middle. Like if you don't mess with that like if you don't mess with that then you don't mess with that i'm a little bit curious about the triggers on the dual sense because they seem uh again they are convex they are not concave and i don't know if that's like great maybe i'm just like looking at the bumpers i don't know that i've seen the no i guess the triggers are the back triggers are fairly the same but like the the bumpers the l1 r1 seem pretty like chunky yeah i ordinarily if it was like a back trigger i'd be worried about them being like bulbing bulbing bulbous

or whatever bulbing out um which is what they did on the ps3 and it was kind of terrible it was like really really bad so i i think they will make a very i think both of them will feel very comfortable uh battery life would be nice i want i want to give it to playstation just because i have always liked the xbox controller more and i like that this controller is taking a pretty significant departure from the the dualshock design which i think has always felt kind of like clunky in the hand and this feels like feels like a like a pretty serious change towards ergonomics and being like a nice controller to use there is like a kink in the playstation 4 controller where like the the hand grips kind of go in but then

they ball back out around the face buttons and d-pad and that is just not here like it is a it is a curve all the way around um and i'm sure that feels nice as well it should be noted we haven't really talked about it but for for the PlayStation 5 controller specifically, it's actually an inch and a half wide. Oh. That seems too small. Yeah, it doesn't really read in the pictures, but you can really only hold it with two fingers

and you have to basically play all the games like that. That seems like bad. I wouldn't do it like that. What a twist. So the winner of this, well, I'm comfortable giving this to PlayStation. Yeah, me too. We're tied. 2-2. So that put tied, right?

2-2. It all comes down to prizes. We don't know. Or do we? Or do we? I feel like we did. So there have been leaks recently. Ooh. Recent leaks.

Feed me the leak juice, Papa. Open your mouth and let me milk the leak juice in from my milk teat. The leak price and release date, according to Iron Man PS, at Iron Man PS5, which I'm sure is legitimate, it will land in North America. The PlayStation 5 will land in North America and Europe on November 20th

and will retail for $500 with the digital edition at $400. No fucking way. I'm not going to fuck around with that $399 garbage. Oh, we didn't even mention that. There's a disc drive-less version of the PlayStation 5 at launch, which again, we don't know the price of either of them. That is an attractive offer to me because I don't play games with disks

on PlayStation 4 anymore because it's loud as fuck. So yeah, I think there's not going to be a $400 version of this console. I don't think so. We're talking about the PS5 right now? Yeah, I think if you get rid of the disk drive of the console, I don't think that's a $100 hardware difference.

I think they're going to take a loss. My guess is $600 for the full version, $599, and then $549 for the disk drive version. That feels right to me. Everybody's saying $500, which is obviously the more attractive price, but I also think that I just built a gaming PC. Like, I know how much these parts cost.

They're going to take a loss on them because that's how gaming hardware works at launch. But, like, I don't even think they're going to take that big of a loss because... I also think people have become accustomed to paying more money for consumer electronics, like, since the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One came out. And so, like, I think that the idea that they're all going to cost $500 is adherence to like a value proposition that isn't doesn't also true after this year i think uh companies will be even more skeptical of taking uh a loss on their product so i think it will be even harder for them to get that price down and and here's the biggie i just don't know how many of these consoles either of them are actually going to be able to make by that point. So there's not really a reason to have a lower price because they're going to sell out no matter what.

Whatever they make is going to sell. I feel like if I had to do best guess, I would say $550 for the standard PS5 and $500 for the diskless and i suggest that because the two skews to me feel very weird for a launch unless you're trying to have a skew that competes price wise with the xbox and i think you'll see the project 1x at $500. The discless PS5 at $500. The one with the disc at $550. So they can claim parity, but also they're going to

be charging more for the one. You just said Project One X, which is nothing, but it sounded fucking cool. Xbox One X. It's not what it's called. Xbox Series X Project One. You cannot get out on me for this. Call it the Xbox Two.

Also, it's called, is it really just Xbox, but this is the Project Series X of Xbox? Like now the system itself is just Xbox. Russ, you've been trying to tell us your thoughts. Everyone just say the name of the thing. I'm going to count to three and say the name of the thing as you understand it. One, two, three. Xbox. Xbox. Xbox. Okay, Russ. name of the thing i'm going to count to three and say the name of the thing as you understand it one two xbox xbox xbox okay russ oh so we're just we're just going to blow right past the fact

that no one knows this thing this thing is called okay good good good good is there a messaging category i wanted to say real quick uh we've been talking about the price of like how much you can discount something that is discless it is worth considering that they can take more of a loss on something that is discless because when they sell the console over time every single game that people buy they are getting 100 of the sales of because they are not buying physical copies from any other company that's good so you can kind of advertise it in that way just worth considering they are also um how can i put this uh creating a console that is best suited for a world in which supply chains could at any point in that chain become very constricted in the next 12 days yeah so so what sorry fresh i just want to what you said is really smart and

same with what justin said i think i had all been thinking about this as like oh well the disc version is the standard and then we're taking money off for the discless version but really the better way of thinking of it is they want discless to be standard and then if you want the privilege of putting a disc in yeah you have to pay more yeah and like when you flip it to that it's like oh yeah then maybe they do throw a hundred dollars on that because it's like well who cares we want everybody to do the discless version yeah i do not think 400 though i can't 400 would be yeah i agree i don't know it's gonna be at 400 i we we should also mention the fact that like there is another console that we have not talked about here and the reason when justin asked what is this console

called and i said xbox and not xbox series s x yeah it's because there is a profoundly dumb also named uh xbox series s and i realize it's possible that you can't hear the difference between xbox series x and s but there is a difference because one of them is way less powerful so yeah they're selling like effectively a souped up xbox one and calling it the xbox series s different from the xbox one series s i mean they haven't officially announced yet but it's almost certainly happening they're using the iphone like language there yeah because then it's like series x is that's the fancy um and then the s is they like oh this is the if you want into this platform service which really i and this doesn't even get into the fact that they're almost certainly also going to release a like hockey puck like your apple tv that is a cloud gaming device that connects to

project x cloud so we don't we don't know if the series s is going to be at launch but at this point we also don't know when the fucking launch of the series x is going to be so this is all calvin ball that we are playing uh i think it's helpful to think about the xbox as like a pc because like first of all it as like a PC because like, first of all, it looks like one also because they have done a pretty good job of that messaging of like all, you know,

cross by your windows 10 games, et cetera, et cetera. But now they are like explicitly talking about like, we're going to release a version of this and then we're going to release a version of this with like completely different, like reduced specs, which is not the direction that this thing usually moves when it

comes to like console development um hey we didn't talk about back compat and i want to circle back to that real quick when we were talking about system specs uh playstation 4 is going to be backwards or playstation 5 is going to be backwards compatible with uh most playstation 4 titles is what they've said which could mean almost all playstation 4 games uh and the xbox uh series x is going to be compatible with all xbox one games and the uh 360 and original xbox games that have been sort of uh brought into the back compat program that currently exists in xbox one so uh ps5 not gonna have PS3, PS2 functionality. Outside of like, I don't know, digital things,

they have PS Now. I assume that's going to be carried through in PlayStation 5. God, there's a lot of shit we don't know. But yeah. Too bad we have to pick a winner. Did we decide a winner on price? What is going to be the cheapest console option? I think the smart play for PlayStation,

and obviously there's no way to, both of them are waiting for the other one obviously there's no way to, for each, both of them are waiting for the other one to pull the trigger on price, right? I feel like that's always kind of the waiting game. If the PlayStation disc drive version costs as much as the Series X and the disc driveless version

costs 50 bucks less, like I think that's a pretty big, big, big win. But i think they're gonna cost about the same thing right yeah i i think the the best hope that there would be the disk drive version somehow costing just a little bit less than xbox or microsoft just has a bigger war chest and like and in a time of financial you know uncertainty that microsoft has more of an opportunity to say okay we saw sony's, we're going to do $50 less. I think before we pick a winner, we should probably, I don't know, did we decide a winner

on price? Not really. Six and one half, right? So that we're still tied is effectively where we're at. I think we should probably jump into reader mail to see if any of it tilts our final decision. I'm going to let you all take this i have to run for a second but you dive into reader mail i love some questions for you in the document oh okay oh do you think oh he's gonna come back he's gonna be like i have the playstation 5 and he's gonna hold up we're gonna get exclusive look at it he's gonna call crash bandicoot uh justin you read some of these i would would love to. Thank you so much. Ezak says, you're designing the next-gen console.

What's one feature you're absolutely adding in? Play has been so fucking good for me on PlayStation 4. Back when I was traveling constantly, being able to play a little bit of Destiny or especially Final Fantasy XIV, anything that's kind of like RPGs, like Persona 5 i played a lot of over remote play anything that's not too like twitchy uh it's huge it's like the way i play video games now that's why the switch is like my off-court buddy like road dog for life and anything that can get close to that is like really the only shit i care about that would be a decisive blow if one of them one of these

companies like announced that um mine would probably be 9k because i feel like everyone's just going to stop at eight thank you russ very helpful sure this is uh weird but um i i feel like an ir port is one that has not been present on a lot of these and i and uh if you are somebody who tries to use a single remote with a lot of different products, it is very annoying to have to always, especially if you just want to use it as a media player from time to time,

it is very annoying to have to get your controller and sync it up and navigate clumsily when you could just use a regular remote to do that stuff. Xbox One has one. PlayStation four does not. I recently toyed, I think I, I've been messing with pairing my harmony via Bluetooth to the console.

There's just such a weird, I don't know. It's such a weird way around. I would just, that's a small thing, but it's not one a lot of people are talking about. So, um,

yeah, that would be it. let's see bog beans says why do you think the ps and the xbox went totally different routes and design like the new xbox looks like a pc and the playstation looks like some godforsaken ac unit like why i don't know it's just different xbox has been boring since the 360 and everybody was like microsoft was like inhale what do you think everybody's like i don't think so i think it's bad and they're like okay we'll just do boring ones for now and i'm sorry sorry we won't bother you anymore yeah it seems like they are the personification of the companies like microsoft

is the new ibm they do the job in a very like staid and stoic way. And then PlayStation, like you look at the games that they greenlight as like exclusives, like the, you know, Last of Us is like a perfect example, like generally like kind of risky or weird games. Yeah. And yeah, so I think it's not a surprise that they would go way more hands-on and design-y with their console box. All right, folks, I'm ready.

I'm ready. I'm ready to call it, and I'm going to call it without Chris Plant. I feel like that makes sense to me. It feels right, doesn't it? Who cares what Plant thinks? I am going to go ahead, and here's where I'm at.

I'm going to say PlayStation is the winner of this console war. He's coming back. Oh, my God. He's got it in his hands. Oh, no. Look at it. It's beautiful.

PlayStation has the real games. It's where the true gamers play. I'm going to go ahead and call this one for PlayStation. That is where I'm at. I have not, again, touched xbox one at all said there for for many years now uh all the games i've been buying especially third-party games and games of service i've bought on playstation 4 and for that like for that reason alone i'm gonna get both of them because i love i love that you know i love that tech and you live for that shit but

like i don't it's gonna take a lot at this point for me to get out of the playstation ecosystem uh or at least like feel like splitting my time between these two different ecosystems like i i when destiny 2 comes out on these two consoles like well i'll probably still play it on my beefy ass pc but like that's that's the for me that's the bigger thing like i don't want to start over like i like the idea of having all that shit already on playstation 5 when i you know day one when i pick it up for me basically the decision is if i have to pick one which one is going to give me things that i can't get otherwise so if i pick the ps5 for example i can still play literally every other game that comes out to xbox series x on my PC because they've

said it like that's part of their strategy is to just like have those as PC games as well. So whereas like Horizon might not ever come to PC, probably it won't. So I think that's actually it probably will. Because Sony is now I mean, Horizon one is coming to PC. Okay, that's fair, but maybe eventually. Whereas all of the, you know, there's not going to be a launch title where it's not coming to PC right at launch as well for the Xbox Series X. Whereas, you know, Horizon might take a few years

before it comes to PC. So I think it's kind of reasonable to assume that if you want to play the big new titles uh on the playstation 5 the only way you're going to be doing it is there on the playstation 5 right launch so chris uh i i would do probably xbox i i think is what i would do i honestly i would say don't buy either at the like at the beginning It's not an option, though. I know, but I'm just saying, like, I'm sharing my opinion. Like, I think, like, right now, save your money,

wait and see what happens. Like, you can play all this stuff. You are going to have, I would say, in this generation, more people catering to you for not buying a box. This will be, I think the the most that the past generation will have been catered to uh in history like you will still be very much part of the ecosystem the second option would be if you don't have a gaming pc i would seriously consider it if you can afford it you can you can get a good one for a pretty reasonable price and it will play

like fresh said almost everything across both consoles eventually um but the thing that i do like about the xbox um is i just i that is where i have all of my games like i everything that i have been playing since x the original xbox at this point is all on one device and i love being able to turn it on in the same way i like opening up my steam library and just having a gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs of games and while i do enjoy like the playstation exclusive once a year or so the place that i'm most comfortable playing games is on my xbox the other thing is like for for most people who do not live in our world, Game Pass is still, I think, the best deal in video games. So if you're buying hardware and you want to play a lot of things, I still think Game Pass is best.

Are you going to miss out on a few things? Yeah, you're going to miss out on stuff kind of no matter what. But for me, it's just a more comfortable video game experience. And I think that's the thing that they've really focused on is that comfort and that the games transfer. Again, like buying what I buy on Xbox and that being available on PC. It's just, it's more welcoming.

Yeah, totally. All right, so who wins? Good news, everybody. We have a winner. Yeah? According to the vote, PlayStation 5 wins the console generation. All right.

Wow. Huge. Congratulations to Sony, Mark Cerny. Quote, PlayStation 5 wins the console generation. All right. Wow. Huge. Congratulations to Sony, Mark Cerny. You fuck with resistance followers, man. Who's going to call Phil Spencer and let him know? I'll call that fucking idiot and tell him, get Tomba next time.

Thank you so much for listening to our program. Shadow of the Colossus is a masterpiece. Last of Us 3. You can follow and listen for free on Spotify. Tell us about our Twitter feed and newsletter. You can follow us on Twitter at TheBestiesSpot. I encourage you to. It's a great place.

Journey. Fucking flower. Emotional experiences. Okay, that's the end of the show. Congratulations PlayStation 5. Thank you so much for listening to the besties, and be sure to join us again next time for the besties. Because should the world's best friends pick the world's best games? The Besties is a Spotify original podcast

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