Late to the party -- PS5 or Xbox X??

[TexArcher 37761]

I haven't really messed with video games in about 5 years, but I used to play NCAA, FIFA, and shooters pretty religiously.

And with NCAA coming back, I'll need a system soon.

I don't really care about the PS5 exclusive titles.  I expect that I'll pick up MLB The Show, the new NCAA game, and maybe Call of Duty or something.

So, I guess I go with the slightly more powerful Xbox X?  It's also the controller that I'm more used to.  I had a PS2 back in the day, then I had XBox 360 and Xbox One.

Other considerations?

Edited March 4 by TexArcher

[thunderlounge 7813]

Gaming PC would be the only option not mentioned. 

[TexArcher 37761]

Right, I already have a laptop and I play a shitload of digital board games on it. 

I want a console really just to veg out on the couch with some sports games.  If NCAA weren't making its triumphant return, I wouldn't even be in the market.  

[thunderlounge 7813]

Maybe a steam deck?

I think they have a video out?

 

[Deej 76750]

I assume you can probably do similar with a PS5, but I have found being able to stream a lot of my Xbox games on my laptop while away from home to be a nice perk. 

[ztejas 43411]

2 hours ago, TexArcher said:

It's also the controller that I'm more used to.  I had a PS2 back in the day, then I had XBox 360 and Xbox One.

The PS5 controller is much more similar to the Xbox now than it was with say the PS3 or PS2.

40 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

I want a console really just to veg out on the couch with some sports games. 

I mean you can just HDMI your laptop and run a controller on it. 

[ajax 2600]

One thing that turned me off on the PS5 is that the HDMI port has a not insignificant rate of failure, and it's pretty major fix. It doesn't seem to have been fixed with newer consoles.

[Captainant 27619]

2 hours ago, TexArcher said:

Right, I already have a laptop and I play a shitload of digital board games on it. 

I want a console really just to veg out on the couch with some sports games.  If NCAA weren't making its triumphant return, I wouldn't even be in the market.  

I'd go PS5 if you want the biggest variety of games and the most power on a console, and Xbox if you want game pass. 

But if you've got a decent PC and a good home network, you can stream your PC to a TV and have an extremely console-like experience, using either SteamLink or Moonlight/Sunshine. My wife and I have played through a few co-op games that way with controllers paired to the TV and streaming from my PC on the LAN

Edited March 4 by Captainant

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

3 hours ago, TexArcher said:

Right, I already have a laptop and I play a shitload of digital board games on it. 

I want a console really just to veg out on the couch with some sports games.  If NCAA weren't making its triumphant return, I wouldn't even be in the market.  

Steam deck is a pc in a console form factor. Its like the nintendo switch, you dock it and it outputs to a tv. Runs steam os, which can run all windows games.

Since you already have a laptop, you dont have to buy games again for a new system.

 

Edited March 4 by WelfareBuysMyWeed

[Captainant 27619]

24 minutes ago, WelfareBuysMyWeed said:

Steam deck is a pc in a console form factor. Its like the nintendo switch, you dock it and it outputs to a tv. Runs steam os, which can run all windows games.

Since you already have a laptop, you dont have to buy games again for a new system.

 

This is neat  and works for "lower end" games - HOWEVER - steamdeck is built to display at 720p, not 1080p or 4k on a TV. So while you can play Cyberpunk2077 or BG3 natively on a steamdeck pretty well, it really struggles at typical desktop resolutions with "modern" (made after 2016) games

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

21 minutes ago, Captainant said:

This is neat  and works for "lower end" games - HOWEVER - steamdeck is built to display at 720p, not 1080p or 4k on a TV. So while you can play Cyberpunk2077 or BG3 natively on a steamdeck pretty well, it really struggles at typical desktop resolutions with "modern" (made after 2016) games

I played Cyberpunk 2077 on my steamdeck at 1080p just fine. Same with Final Fantasy VII remake, same with Crash Bandicoot 4, same with God of War, same with Spider Man: Miles Morales, same with Baldur's Gate 3, same with Horizon: Zero Dawn. It is definitely not for "lower end" games, and resolution is not at all the deciding factor in how well the games run. When *NOT* docked, you have to carefully manage your graphics setting vs your TDP because if you crank it too high, you'll eat your battery in 30 minutes, but in a dock, that doesn't matter at all. Let the Steam Deck eat all the electricity it wants, and you can push it to 1080p just fine, so long as you aren't trying to run everything on ultra graphics setting. Fact is, PS5 and Xbox Series games already run in a mix of low to medium settings, matching them with the Steam Deck and capping your framerate at, say, 40 FPS on a 120hz monitor, they play just fine.

Edited March 4 by WelfareBuysMyWeed

[Deej 76750]

I just pulled my series X off the big 4k TV and moved it to a 34" curved monitor that supports 120 Hz refresh rate. Damn. Game changer. I need to upgrade the TV. 

[immamac 42832]

Is ncaa not gonna be on PC? I would get a PC over any console at this point if all its for is NCAA. 

[immamac 42832]

Lmfao this is hilarious. 

 

[Celery Man 20929]

It’s crazy how bad Madden is in all forms.

I’ll not weigh in on steam deck because i haven’t fucked with it, but I’m skeptical that it is simple and easy. I mean, I’m sure it’s not rocket science, I’m sure anybody could get it set up and working, I could be totally wrong and it’s no more complicated than plugging in a console and waiting for your game to download. Actually i kinda want one now that I think about it. But it’s also totally legitimate to just want an almost entirely straightforward experience as a casual gamer. We have both consoles and i use the Xbox much more, but that may be influenced by spending much more time on the 360 during that era.

[TexArcher 37761]

I went ahead and got the Xbox X, partly because my laptop is getting near full.  This gives me another terrabyte, and it lets me move the Blu Ray player into the bedroom.  Yeah, I have a bunch of discs and I still watch them.  Get off my lawn.

This machine feels like a pretty big jump from the Xbox One.  I'm gruntled.

[Deej 76750]

Heads up...that terabyte you get in the Series X holds maybe a dozen newer AAA games. 

[WelfareBuysMyWeed 5388]

On 3/5/2024 at 7:49 PM, Celery Man said:

It’s crazy how bad Madden is in all forms.

I’ll not weigh in on steam deck because i haven’t fucked with it, but I’m skeptical that it is simple and easy. I mean, I’m sure it’s not rocket science, I’m sure anybody could get it set up and working, I could be totally wrong and it’s no more complicated than plugging in a console and waiting for your game to download. Actually i kinda want one now that I think about it. But it’s also totally legitimate to just want an almost entirely straightforward experience as a casual gamer. We have both consoles and i use the Xbox much more, but that may be influenced by spending much more time on the 360 during that era.

The steam deck is idiot proof out of the box. Without knowing how to unlock it, you literally cannot fuck it up and it's plug and play by default. It won't even show you games that haven't been explicitly whitelisted to be verified as fully playable. You have to go into an additional menu to check "allow steam proton to run on any game" to get the full, unlocked library of steam open to you, and even then you still can't fuck it up from there. To actually fuck things up, you have to go to desktop mode, which is just plane jane normal linux, and even there, if you fuck things up, the way the steam deck handles updates and fuck ups is that valve updates are actually just entire images of the entire linux rootfs in read only mode that overlays ontop of the normal install. Meaning, unless you actually know what you're doing to do so in linux, your permissions on the file system are completely locked down so you don't trip over your own dick. The only folder you have write permission to is your home folder, which you can't do anything other than download shit to from firefox. And if you DO somehow fuck it all up, all you have to do is hold the volume button when powering the thing on, and it goes into recovery mode, which is simply it reflashing a pre-made image onto your rootfs from an embedded ROM (or USB drive if you want). When you actually interact with the steam deck outside of unlocking it, it looks exactly like a console, with big "INSTALL" buttons on the games you want to run:

 

There is no way to accidentally fuck things up, if you want to fuck up your steam deck, you have to explicitly go into desktop mode and fuck around with a lot of non-intuitive console commands from a terminal. There are no buttons you can press that will fuck things up for you, it's impossible to screw it up unless you actually know what you're doing.

 

To "set up" your steam deck for playing on a TV, you just buy a dock, set the steam deck on it, and plug an HDMI or display port cable into the dock and the other end to your TV. The steam deck automatically outputs to the TV when you do this, just like the nintendo switch.

Edited March 11 by WelfareBuysMyWeed

[Zeus 6012]

On 3/11/2024 at 9:00 AM, Deej said:

Heads up...that terabyte you get in the Series X holds maybe a dozen newer AAA games. 

1TB expansion is $150…

but also you can get 2TB SSD for $80 that you can’t play most games from but can store them for faster install to the SSD to play. It takes about 5 mins to move games back and forth but it’s better than having to redownload stuff. 

X box has been really fun so far for me. Gamepass has a ton of shit. Only bought gta5 and online for $20 and it’s pretty fun. 
 

Been hooked on battlefield 5 it’s just so smooth and I love WW2 games. Absolutely chaotic sometimes and cool maps. Way late to the party lol

[Dutch 4465]

I got the 2TB solid state expansion card for Series X, and it works really well.  Upgrading from a 360 and its 120GB hard drive that held ~ 20 games and all the associated save files and expansions, I was shocked how fast the 1TB built-in drive filled. Was also presently surprised how many of my old games are still supported.

[immamac 42832]

4 minutes ago, Dutch said:

I got the 2TB solid state expansion card for Series X, and it works really well.  Upgrading from a 360 and its 120GB hard drive that held ~ 20 games and all the associated save files and expansions, I was shocked how fast the 1TB built-in drive filled. Was also presently surprised how many of my old games are still supported.

4TB is very difficult to fill, but 1-2TB isn’t. Games getting big is kind of funny because they aren’t really 

[Intercourse With Gray 140]

On 3/9/2024 at 7:30 AM, TexArcher said:

I went ahead and got the Xbox X, partly because my laptop is getting near full.  This gives me another terrabyte, and it lets me move the Blu Ray player into the bedroom.  Yeah, I have a bunch of discs and I still watch them.  Get off my lawn.

This machine feels like a pretty big jump from the Xbox One.  I'm gruntled.

How are you liking it so far? Like you, I am in the market for a new system because of College Football 25. I am open to the Series S, which is less powerful than the Series X, it is discless, and it is much cheaper. However, the wife is interested in PS5 because she's wants to play in a couple of the exclusives on the system. I also just really don't want to drop $500 on a system when the next gens are due out in 2026. I currently play Madden on the PC and use an Elite 2 controller (Madden is shit on PC btw), so I am not sure if having that controller will impact my decision.  

[TexArcher 37761]

47 minutes ago, Intercourse With Gray said:

How are you liking it so far? Like you, I am in the market for a new system because of College Football 25. I am open to the Series S, which is less powerful than the Series X, it is discless, and it is much cheaper. However, the wife is interested in PS5 because she's wants to play in a couple of the exclusives on the system. I also just really don't want to drop $500 on a system when the next gens are due out in 2026. I currently play Madden on the PC and use an Elite 2 controller (Madden is shit on PC btw), so I am not sure if having that controller will impact my decision.  

I'm happy with it.  Load times are pretty close to non-existent, no lag online, graphics are really good, etc.  I don't know how it compares to the S, but this thing is a horse.  

All I've played so far is Battlefield 5, FC 24 (FIFA), and MLB the Show 24.  They're all good, and they're all gonna be retired when NCAA drops.