I am not much of a console gamer but thankfully we've got Raymon. He's not technically a writer here but he introduced to self-isolate at home which worked out great because he needed something he could do all day, and I needed a giant PlayStation fanboy to plop himself on the couch and play as much PS5 as humanly possible, then tell me about what Sony did right, and where we'd like to see them do better.

One of the most next-genthings about the PS5 is something that it doesn'tshare with its competition. The new Xbox controlleris same, same, but better, while the DualSense controller is a huge step forward for Sony. It manages first and foremostto feel like it was designed with humans in mind, ratherthan tiny frog people. And while the D-pad feels slightly mushier than the DualShock 4, it's not so bad as to stop you from playing precision retro titles, and it's definitely not enough to distract from the magic that lives inside. The rumble has also been updated and it's now so detailed as to differentiate your foot steps on different surfaces, and also give you a sense of directionality in your hands, which is pretty neat but nothing compared to theadaptive resistance triggers. These allow developersto more directly simulate the trigger pull of different guns, the tension of drawing a bow, or the way a gas pedal will fight you as you lose traction on a muddy road. The feedback is strong, immediate, and surprisingly immersive.  Anyway, Raymons suggestion is to treat it like super cool visual effectsin a Call of Duty title. Enjoy it for what it is in single player then turn it off for anykind of competitive gaming. His one real complaintabout the controller is a relatively minor onebut it is a good point.

 Transferring your data from PlayStation 4 can be done via ethernet,or you can start fresh by using the onscreen promptson the PlayStation app, and then that'sit, you're logged in. If you've got PS Plus, your PS4 cloud savesare ready to download, then you can pop in a disc to install a game or download any game from your library, and much faster than on Sony's last-gen console. In fact, the wholeconsole feels much quicker in part due to the PS5's brand new UI. It's still fundamentally a refined version of the PS3's XrossMediaBar, but there are some new features, like Remote Play, which allows you to stream PS5 games to yourPlayStation 4 in another room, and the Game Switcher thatlooks like Sony may have plans for some kind of quick resume like option. And then of course there's a fresh 4K HDR veneer over everything which helps give the PS5a way more next-gen feel compared to the trusted if it ain't broke, don'tfix it approach of the Xbox. And the same can kind of be said of the launch titles onboth sides, am I right? Sony put together one heckof a well-rounded lineup to the point where onlythe most devoted Xbox, we're talking about a couple of extra teraflops at this point. Part of the problem for Microsoft might be that theyreportedly sent dev kits out later than Sony, givingdevelopers less time to optimize. Or it could be the care that Sony put into makingcreating games easier for the PS5. Either way it's a clear benefit to gamers who go team Sony right now. Unlike the hyped up SSD. Contrary to what themarketing might have suggested loading times have notsuddenly disappeared, at least for the time being. But the good news is that they have trimmeddown very significantly. When you load up somethinglike Demon's Souls and transfer betweengorgeously detailed worlds, in just a couple ofseconds you are waiting but it's a short, nextgeneration kind of waiting, and I truly believe that itwill continue to improve. Speaking of Demon's Souls,the game is absolutely lovely. The amount of detail andclarity in it feels next-gen in a way that no othergame currently does. And that may be becauseit's one of two launch games that is only on the PlayStation 5, meaning that it has no legacybaggage to carry along. Now, some of the NPC facesmight evoke Craig flashbacks but overall it looks awesome and is also a rewarding,if challenging play. Spider-Man: Miles Moraleslooks, feels, and plays great, but unfortunately when it's put next to the previous gen version, I mean, yeah the PS5 version is sharper and the materials andhair look more realistic, but those ray-tracedreflections whiz by so fast that you probably won'treally appreciate them unless you slow down andsmell the rays. It's not as good abundle game as Wii Sports but like Wii Sports, it manages to be both agreat technical showcase of the controller and its features, and more than that, with a surprising varietyof gameplay segments, each with their own unique gimmicks that make you wanna keep playing and find out what's coming next. There's no gritty realism, nolife lessons, just plain fun. Remember that? Remember fun in video games? I do. In a similar cuteness overload vein, Sackboy: A Big Adventureis a very competent level based 3D platformer that you can play with up tofour players on one screen. Maybe more games should start to use the extra horsepower of next-gen for more couch co-op, right? Well, okay, that game is also on the PlayStation 4. But it doesn't matter, it has a delightful crafty look, and the levels look so tactileyou can almost feel them.

  The last of the exclusive launch games are, well exclusive to Sonyplatforms anyway is Bugsnax.  We don't talk about Bugsnax here. In terms of multiplayer releases though, the worst thing I can sayabout the PlayStation 5 is that support for theDualSense controller is a little hit or miss. Call of Duty: Black Ops ColdWar included unique tuning for the trigger pull ofevery gun, which is cool, supposedly, I mean, I couldn'treally tell the difference. And then Assassin's creed Valhalla put no effort into it whatsoever. No, actually I lied. The worst thing is howmany multi-platform games including EA's entire library are included with Microsoft'sdirt cheap Xbox Game Pass for which Sony has no direct competitor. In the longer-termcompanies with deep pockets, like Amazon, Facebook, and Google are likely going to continueto invest in game studios, which is probably going tothin Microsoft's offering here, but for the time being Sony's$400 value discless offering loses a lot of its sheen if you consider that fourgame purchases for it could have gotten you a Series X, which is a more powerful machine, and a year and a half of Game Pass. PS now does have a growinglibrary of downloadable games to go along with the 800plus streamable ones, but its technology builton the PS3 cell chip is definitely starting toshow it's a tooth lengthiness. 720p, Sony? Really? And it suffers from, in my opinion, too much focus on thequantity versus the quality of the included titles. Then there's Sony's other service, the PS Plus collection. It's only got like 20 games but they are really high quality. So it's a great booster shot for your PlayStation game collection but it raises the question, why not just combine the two, fill in the gaps in firstparty previous gen titles and then have a real Game Passcompetitor, a formidable one? That would also help address another big Xbox advantage,backwards compatibility. Microsoft offers support all the way back to select games on the original Xbox, not to mention unofficial emulated support for Nintendo (coughs) and Sony consoles. Meanwhile, the Sony team is stuck with no real PS1 to PS3 compatibility, outside of streamingselect games from PS Now. The dumbest thing about this is that they sellindividual PS2 games on PSN that are clearly justrunning in an emulator. Like look at the PS2 logo here, you guys gotta fix this. It's especially frustrating because outside of Nintendo nobody has as deep a backcatalog as Sony does. A way to effortlessly run older games on modern displays would bea huge boom to loyal fans. In fairness though, thesupport for PS4 titles at least ranges from fine to really great. The most fine games like Last of Us II load slightly quicker and manage to maintain an absolute 30 FPS, or even a PS4 Pro woulddrop a frame here or there but they otherwise playand look exactly the same. The good games are the onesthat had dynamic resolution but wouldn't hit 4K consistently or had a performance mode that wouldn't hit 60 framesper second all the time and are now much smoother or sharper. God of War 2018 is aperfect example of this, maintaining a steady pace on PS5, even if it's at 1080p, which looks much less sharpthan the resolution mode. So that's a win, but a small one. And finally, the great ones are games like Ghost of Tsushima, that got a PS5 specific updateto unlock the frame rate and run closer to their 4K target. The result is spectacular, fluid, and so sharp that itactually feels more next-gen than some games that weremade specifically for the PS5.

I really hope more gamesget that kind of an update rather than a paid remaster like we saw so often last generation. Bundling them in a subscription service where the developer getspaid out by playtime would go a long way towards making thateconomically viable, you know. But if I was a betting man, I'd say soon enough you'llbe able to pay $30 or more to play Last of Us IIremastered for the PS5 which you will, like a sucker. This leads me to some of the real problems that we have with the system itself. When Microsoft announcedtheir smart delivery system that ensured that you got the best version of a game available on your console, it honestly sounded like kindof a silly marketing term. I mean, doi, right? So we thought, until Davidloaded up the PlayStation store and somehow managed todownload both the PS4 version and PS5 versions of Callof Duty without realizing that almost half of thepoor little SSD was full. Turns out it's a new Sonyinvention called dumb delivery. And while you can move and playbackwards compatible titles off of an external drive, you cannot move actual PS5games off of the console yet, and the M.2 expansionslot is not yet activated. So if your internal SSD is full, I really hope you enjoy deleting games and re-downloading them. Also, you cannot backupyour saves over USB anymore, only cloud saves are allowed, and get this they'relocked behind a paywall because you need PS Plusin order to access them. That right there is somegrade A horse (beeps). And even if you pay Sony'ssave game protection money getting your PS4 savesto work on PS5 games can be a bit of a chore. Then there's the othersystem level gripes, the lack of variable refresh rate, and 8K support wouldn'thave been such a big deal, if they hadn't been talkedabout before the launch or if they hadn't put thelogo right on the box. And then there's 1440p, I mean I get it, there's no 1440p TVs and you would need developers to go and tune the graphics settings for another resolution target, but I mean come on, these are very skilled developers and this is somethingthat I can do manually in about 30 minutes per game. And there are so many gamers out there that are rocking 1440p120 Hertz gaming monitors in their dorm rooms, that would love to be able touse the system to its fullest. Though, arguably Sony's bigger concern might be the gamers with HDMI 2.1 TVs not getting the full experience. While both next-gen consoles advertise being HDMI 2.1 compliant, the PS5 is currently limited to 32 gigabit per secondfrom its HDMI port. So if you wanna use theadvertised 4K 120 Hertz mode you're stuck using 4.2.2chroma subsampling. In a nutshell what that means is ugly fringing on sharplines, particularly text. Sony is reportedly working on a fix, but if the rumors of the limitation being a hardware one are true, it might not be possible forthem to completely fix it. Another disappointmentis weak Dolby support, no Atmos in games andno Dolby Vision at all. Yeah, there's HDR 10, whichis good enough, for now. And sure games using HDR 10 do look good but they also looked good last generation, and it's pretty muchaccepted in the industry now that Dolby Vision isthe future-proof choice, with support for our dynamic metadata, Dolby Vision's low latency format and over 68 billion colors versus HDR 10's paltry 1billion and static metadata. For both of them, Sony has pulled a real Sony here and created proprietarysolutions for low latency video as well as their Tempest 3D audio engine. Now, to be fair, Tempest hasn'tbeen given a fair shot yet, so it may end up being a competitive or even superior solutioncompared to Atmos thanks to its dedicatedhardware acceleration. For right now though, we just don't know. The engine currently only supports headphone use though, and the current DAC in theDualSense is just okay. There are hardware disappointments too, and I mean other than the ugly exterior. Although preliminary reports for the new cooling system were good, now that the system is in people's hands it looks like there are atleast a couple of snafus.

 One major issue according to Gamers Nexus is that due to a lack of contact between the heat sink andone of the memory chips it reaches temperatures as high as around 95 degrees under-load. Now, this is within spec albeit barely, but you gotta rememberthat it's being measured on a brand new consolewith no dust buildup. So only time will tell if that's gonna be aproblem in the long run. These things along withfrequent hard crashes requiring us to reset the console made the PS5 feel a little bit rushed. But there's light atthe end of the tunnel. Software updates are alreadycoming fast and frequently. We've got a fix for the unreliable RestMode bricking consoles, we've got faster boot-up times than when we tested even a week ago, there's an end now to downloading both PS4 and PS5 versions of games by default, and they've even improved performance. There are still some sticking issues like importing saves, gettingstuck while updating games, or just straight systemlockups and crashes. But if the rate of improvementis anything to go by by the time you canactually buy one in a store it should be mostly sorted. Leading finally to the question should you, assuming you can find one, give Sony your hard-earned money today for a PlayStation 5? If I were you I'd start saving now, but I'd wait just a little bitlonger to pull the trigger. At 399 for the all-digitaland 499 for the disc version, it's a pretty incredible value. Like good luck buildinga competing gaming PC for that kind of money, by the way, make sure you're subscribed for the upcoming video wherenaturally we're gonna try. It absolutely feels like agenerational jump over the PS4 but my worry is more about Sony's future. The PS5 was clearly built around the old sell individual games model that seems to be on the way out. Next to Nintendo's halfconsole, half handheld vision and Microsoft's playwhatever game you want, wherever you damn well please approach, the PS5 is like a new evolutionfrom an ancient world. With that said it's a gamingmachine first and foremost and it's a good one, and as it will only get better with its numerous upcoming exclusives, it makes it a more sensible companion to your PC gaming rig than an Xbox if you're a PC player as well.