In a stark contrast to Microsoft’s open approach towards its Xbox Series X/S console – the American company has allowed plenty of Western media, and some “Influencers” a hands on trial with its console – Sony has kept the PlayStation 5 under wraps.
This has changed a bit over the last few days, as the company has allowed some Japanese media members, and youtubers some playing time with its next gen console. The Japanese media, and YouTubers are likelier to speak positive about the console, since Xbox isn’t much of a factor in the Asian country. So, I get Sony’s strategy here.
Still, according to videogameschronicle.com, as expected, the Japanese media is fairly impressed with the new system. Both the cooling unit, and the load times of the PlayStation 5 have received praise.
“I started playing one of the launch titles, Godfall, and after some time passed, I checked [the temperature]. The breeze coming from the exhaust port was gentle and didn’t feel exceedingly hot. During this time, the studio itself was about 30 degrees Celsius. Based on the specifications of the SoC, it operates at around 55 to 60 degrees Celsius. While you may think, ‘isn’t the fan loud?’, it’s quite the opposite.” -4Gamer
Apparently the PlayStation 5’s massive size serves its purpose well in terms of cooling the unit. The Japanese media focused mostly on dispelling the concerns that the console would over heat by stating that the console will not suffer from such issues. We will reserve judgement on this (its cooling capabilities) until we have a unit ourselves and we test some of the more graphically demanding games.
Because the gameplay videos are all in Japanese, it is hard to really gauge the capabilities of the system, as opposed to the Xbox Series X. In addition, the games played in the above video are not that demanding. Gameplay wise there is no ‘Wow’ moment to be had as of yet.
To be fair, most of the Xbox Series X videos that we have gotten on the west by our media have focused on the Xbox Series X’s backwards compatibility, and its ability to automatically improve unpatched games from the get go, as there are (obviously) no current Xbox Series X games available for play.
I can’t help but wonder however, why Sony has kept the machine away from us. I feel like I know a lot about the Xbox Series X at this point, but feel a bit unsure of the PlayStation 5’s capabilities, as we haven’t even seen how it will deal we our huge catalogue of PS4 games.
For example, will The Last of Us: Part II receive an immediate bump to 60fps on brute CPU force alone? It should be possible, the Xbox Series X offers that type of ‘free of charge’ and ‘free of patch’ updates to current games.
With about a month left until launch, I do expect Sony to at some point ship some units to this side of the world. Rumors about the PlayStation 5’s architecture being quite less powerful than the Xbox Series X might be a reason for the hold up.
Western media is likelier to dissect the system’s innards, and in the marketing battle that is being waged with Microsoft it might not be good of the company if this(the confirmation of some of these rumors) were to happen early.
Still, we eagerly await for Western media outlets to receive its consoles so we can at least gauge how effective the PlayStation 5 is in relation to the Xbox Series X in improving current generation games.
The PlayStation 5 arrives to U.S. shores on November 12th.