Im not much of a gamer (ironically I make games for a living) but I made a bet with my kids that if the Detroit Lions make the playoffs this year I’ll buy them a system, and its looking like almost a lock to happen, so I want to get in on some Holiday deals.
This is their first non-Nintendo system so I’m a little lost on which way to go at this point in the generation cycle. For reference they’re 7 and 9 year old boys and are gonna be new to gaming that isnt based around crafting or Italian brothers. (i made them use my old NES, then SNES first, then got them a Switch a couple years back)
Looks like you’ve got plenty of feedback already, but as another person who owns both, hopefully I can provide some kind of insight.
I like both, they’re both good. The answer as many have said is which one more of their friends game on. I stuck with xbox during the ps4/xbox one generation where microsoft really screwed the pooch and convinced a lot of people to drop them in favor of Sony. I ended up losing a majority of people I used to play games with, and that sucked. Seems like this is less of an issue, as you’ve said the friends are pretty mixed.
I dust off my ps5 occasionally for the one off “exclusive” that I binge for a couple weeks, then wait for the next one. Great games to be sure, but for some reason, any multi plats I prefer to play on my series x. I’m also pretty fond of gamepass and have used it to play a good amount of games I probably wouldn’t have considered buying by themselves and had a lot of fun.
Another thing thats purely personal preference is my preference for the Xbox controller. The dual sense is the absolute best PlayStation controller they’ve ever made. The features they’ve managed to cram in there are pretty noteworthy and innovative. Having said that, the battery life is garbage, and I just don’t find it that comfortable for really intense gameplay since the left stick is positioned lower in the middle. As an example, we got a physical copy of stray (which is now available on Xbox BTW) on deep discount during black Friday at gamestop. My wife and I were going back and forth trying to get an achievement where you’re running down this corridor avoiding these little bacterial creatures that want to eat the poor kitty. To get the fast twitch movement to juke the mfers, I was having to hold it at a weird and uncomfortable angle to get the thumb dexterity I needed to finally get through it without getting touched. I’ve never had this problem with an Xbox controller. I’m sure there’s someone with the opposite experience as me, just sharing what I’ve noticed for me personally. As for the dual sense having an integrated rechargeable battery, Ive had a series x since launch week, and purchased 3rd party rechargeable batteries that came with a charge dock, and I haven’t had to think about it since. The battery’s still far outlast those in a dual sense, and the cost was similar to sonys dual sense charge dock (which I also highly recommend if you go ps5).
Either way they’ll be happy and there’s plenty available to them no matter what they end up with. Still, if you’re going with one, hard to beat the value with an Xbox.