With the holidays approaching, Sony and Microsoft are making gamers’ wishes come true with their introduction of Sony’s new Playstation 5 and Microsoft’s new Xbox Series X.

The Xbox Series X was released on Nov. 10, just nine days sooner than the  Playstation 5 (PS5) official release date on Nov. 19, despite pre-orders which have already been shipped. The Xbox Series X retails for $499. There is also a digital version that does not come with a disc port for $299. The same thing goes for the PS5. The standard edition is $499 with the digital edition being $299. Both the consoles’ pre-orders sold out almost instantly and are being resold for upwards of $600.

Both the Xbox Series X and the Playstation 5 will offer cross-platform play. This allows users on all gaming consoles, including PC, to game together. 

Right off the bat the Xbox Series X has an advantage. With the Xbox, Microsoft is offering a game pass. For $9.99 a month the player can have unlimited access to over 100 games. This is a feature that the Playstation does not offer.  One interesting way Sony and Microsoft are attempting to sway gamers to their side is through the use of exclusive games. Microsoft has secured Forza Motorsport, a popular racing game, alongside other RPG games likes fable and first person shooter games like Halo. To make up for the loss of Forza, Sony has exclusive contracts with special games like Spiderman: Miles Morales and Gran Turismo 7.

However, to make up for the lack of the gamepass, the Playstation has come out with an upgraded gaming controller. The PS5’s DualSense controller comes with many new upgrades like new haptics (which make the vibrations of the controller more vivid and accurate) and adaptive triggers, which change the sensitivity of the triggers based on what is happening in game. 

The DualSense controller also has a center touchpad, a gyroscope for motion controls, and a built-in speaker. As for the Xbox controller not much is new. Xbox only upgraded the D-pad and added a share button. The D-pad is very minute and helps users select and scroll through keyboards but other than that it isn’t very useful. It is shaped like a cross and each end moves the cursor to whichever side is pressed on. The Xbox controller is retailed at $59.99 while the PS5’s DualSense is $69.99.

The Xbox has a faster CPU processing speed than the PS5. The Xbox’s 1TB storage space is significantly larger than the Ps5’s 825 GB of storage but other than these couple of differences both the Xbox and PS5 have the same optical drive of 4K UHD and a blu ray drive as well as the same optical performance of 4K @ 60 FPS, Up to 120 FPS and 8K.

Although both the new consoles introduce faster loading and processing speeds, there isn’t much of a reason to pick up a new console just yet because there is no significant difference between the newer gen and the older gen consoles.