Generation Next is Here

 PS5 will be officially launched this coming Friday, 11Dec2020
The new tag line is "Play Has No Limits" replacing the PS4 generation's "Greatness Awaits"

I feel both surprised and thankful that both Sony and Microsoft managed to launched their new generation
of game consoles in 2020, amidst a pandemic and what most likely to be a precursor to a worldwide economic downturn. The other surprising fact is that Japan, is seeing much higher PS5 launch numbers compared to PS4 back in 2014.

We are seeing an uptick in gaming spending throughout the pandemic season, where one can only presume more time spend indoors,  more time spend on gaming since there is a limit on how much you can binge watch on Netflix.

Both Xbox and PS5 unfortunately, suffers from product scarcity during this launch period, caused by this increased consumer demand. The problem is further compounded by nefarious product scalping, some groups amassing more than 3,000 units to be resold for profit. 

Scalping is not new, especially for things like sneakers and concert tickets, and unfortunately it has ventured into gaming consoles. Hopefully the situation will sort itself out after the holiday gift-giving season, if both manufacturers and distribution can keep pace.

PS5 - Greatness Still Awaits (unfortunately)

Hardware concerns - while most hardware launches have their own set of manufacturing issues/defects, some of the hardware concerns of the PS5 may not be production issues but a fundamental design issue. There are reports of the on-board NAND chips for the SSD running close to the vendor-specified 95 deg C. Only time will tell whether this is will cause reliability issues in the future.

Limited storage - The on-board 825GB SSD storage is super-fast and great but with only ~670GB usable space and gargantuan game sizes of the 4K gaming generation, storage management can be a chore especially when the NVME expansion is currently disabled and PS5 games cannot be off-loaded to slower speeds external USB storage

Firmware concerns - Early experiences also had multiple field reports of games causing bricking, crashes and glitches, something that no doubt will be addressed with each subsequent firmware updates

Next gen features - Several next gen features, such as ray-tracing, HDMI 2.1 supported Variable Refresh Rates (VRR) and Tempest Audio 3D is either not yet widely implemented or not generally available...that need to be addressed in future firmware updates

Expensive games - USD70 is the new standard price for a full-sized AAA-game - but it remains to be seen, whether publishers will be back to their old tricks of add-on DLCs and other monetizing schemes

Games are under cooked - an unavoidable side-effect game launches in 2020 is that many of the games seems to be under-cooked, littered with bugs and performance snafus, either on base consoles of generation prior, or the latest premium consoles. Apart from having to deal with the inconveniences of working from home, many developers also had to manage the complexities of delivering a product that can run across eight console configurations. This ultimately means, day-one game experiences always require a day-one patch and more often than not run far from optimal, until after multiple revisions months later.

New way of Gaming for an Older Gamer
My gaming taste has changed over the course of the PS4 generation, with some genres no longer holding my interest.
Gone are my days of multiplayer online games, my focus now is on single player narrative-driven games.
Action adventure and RPG will be my norm, with the occasional arcade racer, couch co-op or football games.
 
With day-one game experience no longer being the optimum time to play, I will play each game when:
- it has gone down in price, gone up in stability/performance - a win-win scenario. With that said, I wish Cyberpunk 2077 a successful launch, and I look forward to playing sometime in 2021 when it is available on PS5, running smoothly - with a caveat that I managed to get a PS5 by then.

* ooo *