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VPNs for ad-blocking But whether you spend more or less on next-gen is only part of the discussion. There’s a case to be made for going all out on the expensive models of the next-gen consoles, but things are more complicated when it comes to the digital editions, especially if you plan on buying a next-gen Xbox. Let’s take a closer look at the essential info first before answering the question. While the PlayStation 5 costs $749.95RRP, the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition is priced at $599.95. Ditching a disc drive means you have the potential to save $150 for a disc drive-less PS5 that’s just as powerful as its disc-compatible sibling. It’ll cost you $499RRP for the Xbox Series S and $749RRP for the Xbox Series X, which means there’s an even bigger cost difference between the digital edition and flagship next-gen Xbox consoles ($250). Ultimately, the Xbox Series S has a slower CPU, less powerful GPU, less RAM, a lower max resolution, and a smaller hard drive. This latter point is particularly relevant because having no disc drive on the Xbox Series S means every bit of downloadable entertainment has to be stored on the 512GB hard drive: games, patches, movies, TV series, and apps. But a 4K UHD disc can have a bit rate of up to 108Mbps, which is close to seven times the Netflix 4K stream. Those extra megabits per second allow for noticeable quality improvements, which means that until streaming providers like Netflix start offering higher bit-rate content, and internet speeds comfortably reach a point where they have faster download speeds, physical media will always look better than digital in side-by-side comparisons. The main benefit of a next-gen console with a disc drive is versatility. They’ll let you use discs from games that support backwards compatibility to play your old library of games, plus you can watch 4K UHD discs, Blu-rays, and DVDs via console media players. The main benefit of a digital-edition next-gen console is twofold: saving on the initial cost and saving on space. Both the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition and Xbox Series S are cheaper and more compact than their flagship counterparts (more so the Xbox Series S). For comparison, at the time of writing, The Last of Us Part II costs $99.95 for a physical copy from EB Games and the same amount from the Australian PlayStation Store. Analyst Daniel Ahmad says that Sony, in particular, earns around 50 per cent more for purchases of digital versions of third-party games and roughly 30 per cent more for first-party titles. If Sony and Microsoft are in a position to charge lower RRPs for digital versions of games, it will improve the attractiveness of their respective digital next-gen consoles. With physical and digital games charged identically, though, the main thing being saved for opting for a disc over digital is installation time, bandwidth (less data to download), and you’ll still need somewhere to store the case. The PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S can all benefit from impromptu storage upgrades via compatible USB 3.1 hard drives, but these will only be useful for playing backwards-compatible titles and not next-gen games. This is because next-gen games are reliant on the respective speedier custom internal drives, which have faster performance than USB 3.1 hard drives. This extra speed means games load incredibly fast and are playable in truly next-gen ways (more on this below). Let’s break this down. An Xbox Series S retails for $499, while the Series X costs $749. That $499 for the Series S gets you a 512GB internal hard drive, which isn’t a whole lot of compatible storage for next-gen games. To boost that next-gen storage to 1.5TB, it’ll cost an extra $359, bringing the total purchasing cost for more storage to $858. Meanwhile, the $749 Series X boasts a more generous 1TB drive, plus it comes with a disc drive and true next-gen hardware. Sony hasn’t announced any proprietary upgrades for storing next-gen games on its PlayStation 5 consoles, but it does have a spare NVMe slot that owners can use to expand internal storage. The main catch is that not every M.2 SSD is expected to be compatible with this PS5 slot and, at least according to renowned tech specialists Digital Foundry, it’ll be worth waiting for Sony to officially sanction the best PCI-express 4.0 M.2 drives that are compatible with the PlayStation 5 in a way that lets them take advantage of its next-gen performance. For comparison, the Xbox One has a similar hard drive to the PlayStation 4, but the Xbox Series X has IO throughput of 2.4GB/s for raw files and 4.8GB/s for compressed files. The PS4’s IO throughput is 55 times faster than the PS4’s, which not only means games can load a lot faster, it also means that developers can enhance gameplay features such as maximum movement speed, actual blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fast travel times, and the size of sprawling open worlds. This is why speed matters as much as capacity when it comes to next-gen storage. Assumedly to cut off this hurdle at the pass, Microsoft and Sony have mentioned on-demand installation for content that’s relevant to gamers. Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One, for instance, lets you pick whether you want to download all Halo games in the collection, or just their campaigns or multiplayer modes. In an interview with Wired, the PlayStation 5’s system architect Mark Cerny had this to say on the matter: “Rather than treating games like a big block of data, we’re allowing finer-grained access to the data.” Meanwhile, Xbox Series X (and, assumedly, Xbox Series S) will benefit from Intelligent Delivery: a developer-driven tool that means games can be broken up into chunks so players can choose what’s downloaded to their next-gen Xbox drives.
