Gizmodo: You Should Probably Skip Buying a New Xbox or PlayStation This Year

[Tek]

Now that both Sony and Microsoft have released the official specs of their upcoming consoles, there’s plenty to get excited about this coming holiday season—maybe. In a recent interview with CNBC, Microsoft Xbox chief Phil Spencer said that, while he expects Xbox Series X production to remain on schedule, the covid-19 pandemic may delay games from launching on the new console at the same time of its release.

The biggest problem, Spencer said, is that developers are now working remotely. That adds new challenges to the entire game development process, like sharing extremely large files over home internet connections that might not be the fastest. (Thank goodness many ISPs have waived data caps.) If enough games get delayed on either platform, there might not be much of a reason to rush out and buy the latest and greatest consoles. (And maybe wait to upgrade your PC, too.)

But even if both consoles debut on time, and if there’s a decent spread of games available, how many of those titles will actually utilize the consoles’ ray tracing capabilities? We’ve seen what ray tracing looks like with Minecraft on the Xbox Series X, and Square Enix released a demo video of what ray tracing could look like for more graphically intensive games on the Xbox Series X and PS5. But we’ve heard nothing but crickets when it comes to which games will be available with ray tracing on both consoles at launch.

If Cyberpunk 2077 hits its September release date and is available for the Series X when that console launches, that could be enough of a reason for current Xbox owners to upgrade—at least those who care about ray tracing on console games. (No judgment; I bought the PS4 just because I wanted to play Detroit: Become Human, and there was nothing all that special about that console.) That leaves the PS5 out in the cold graphics-wise since we haven’t seen any sneak peaks or even confirmation about ray tracing games for the upcoming console. But its SSD storage upgrades, a custom 825GB SSD running on a PCIe 4.0 interconnect, and the ability to use off-the-shelf SSDs to expand storage space, will definitely come in handy for The Last of Us 2, which takes up a massive 100GB.

You Should Probably Skip Buying a New Xbox or PlayStation This Year

Now that both Sony and Microsoft have released the official specs of their upcoming consoles, there’s plenty to get excited about this coming holiday season—maybe. In a recent interview with CNBC, Microsoft Xbox chief Phil Spencer said that, while he expects Xbox Series X production to remain on...

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