Topic: Should I buy a PS5?

Hi Y'all,

I own a PC but my college friend owns a PS4. We have graduated and now live in different cities. I'm trying to keep touch, so we've been playing COD MW (2019) using the cross play feature. However, my friend is getting tried of COD, so I've been looking for another game that supports cross play. However, I was not able to find any other good game that supports cross play. I really wanted to play Destiny 2 with my friend, but it doesn't support cross play. Should I buy a PS5 so that I can play multiplayer games with my friend? It seems like a waste of money because my PC is really powerful, and I really like playing games on my PC. Thanks.

Best regards,
Steve

Unless the PS5 is cross play with the PS4 why not just buy a PS4. It will be cheaper too.

@realIK17 If your friend owns a PS4 and will be getting a PS5, then it makes sense to get a PS5. It may make more sense to get a PS4 but as its at the end of its life, it might be better to wait. It doesn't matter how powerful your PC is though if you can't play many games with your friend and buying either would open up a lot more games to play together. You will never get to play certain games and relying on just a 'few' of the cross play titles that both you and your friend must enjoy if you don't get a Playstation. The PS5 should at least give you access to lots of exclusive games that you missed as well - quite a few Game of the Year winners and nominees that were only available on PS4 - via its Backwards Compatibility. It could provide a LOT of great gaming experiences that you missed out on and provide you with a much larger array of online multi-player games.

The way the new consoles have been designed, they could have advantages over even the highest end PC. Maybe not in native resolution figures but in what that SSD can offer and the fact that games can utilise that in unique ways that they can't on PC's because of the fact that games are not coded to use the SSD in the same way because not all PC's have one. The small advantages an SSD offers over a HDD on PC is only a 'small' part of what they offer on next gen and because they are built differently, the games can be coded differently. Games on PC will need to be coded to work on PC's with regular HDD's and get 'minimal' benefits from using SSD's - slightly better load times because it cuts out the seek time and can stream assets to RAM a bit faster. It seems that next gen consoles can literally stream direct from SSD to GPU, have ALL the assets for a single frame streamed in from the SSD and dumped ready for the assets for the next frame. It means that everything you see can be completely changed in a single frame without needing to hold all the assets for the entire area, and any potential changes, in RAM. Its why you can have instant Fast Travel because everything from the new area, the new 'frame' can be streamed in relatively instantaneously from SSD instead of having to clear the RAM, find where the assets are for the area you are travelling to, load all those assets into RAM at whatever 'read' rate that HDD has and then stream those into the GPU. Unless all PC's have SSD's that can stream direct to the system, then PC games will be built to use RAM and rely on the speed of PC data transfer to RAM, CPU decompression, RAM bandwidth (which often is GDDR4) before it reaches the GPU.

Of course PC's can still have more 'brute force' to push high native pixel counts etc but whether they can keep up in certain other areas, we will have to see. It may well be worth getting a PS5 for some advantages it may offer as well as playing games you won't get on PC and playing with your friend - assuming he gets a PS5 too. The downside will be that you will need a PS+ subscription but on the plus side, that will give you free games for as long as you remain a subscriber.

I can't tell you what is the 'right' decision for you and can't predict the future either but if playing games with your friend is important, then I would think a PS5 will be a good investment. I would think that PS4 games would still offer party chat and work with people playing on PS5 - although we have yet to get answers to all BC questions. I don't think it will be a waste of money myself but then I have a lot of interest in playing the games that will only be on PS5.

@BAMozzy I agree and appreciate your in-depth analysis about PC versus PS5. However, a beefy PC ($2000+) simply cost way more than a PSx ($500,) which means that PSx will never be as powerful as a beefy PC (combined performances of CPU, GPU, and etc.) Don't get me wrong because I'm still gonna get a PS5. I have decided that friendship values more than a couple hundred dollars.

@Genrou I am a tech fanatic and power user, so buying weak tech simply pains me lol. I appreciate the advice but I am gonna convince my friend to get a PS5 too 😀.

Only read the title.

Yes.