<<Console Wars>> PS5 vs. XSX

So let me clean this up for you since you didn't read the finer prints of your own exploits. First 3 months for $1 + $50 for a year (EA conversion) + 1 year and 9 months ($15/mo) for new members only.

  • 3 years Playstation Plus, Saiwa = $96 ($2.67/mo)
  • 3 years Game Pass Ultimate, new members = $216 ($6.00/mo) $366 ($10.1/mo)
  • 3 years Game Pass Ultimate, existing members = $363 ($10.08/mo) $540 ($15/mo)
  • 3 years Game Pass Ultimate, Madmick = Free ($free/mo) $100 ($2.77/mo)
*Didn't you technically pay $100 for the upconversion as stated in your post?
You're like a child who wandered into a movie theater.

You're using a gray market price for PS Plus. Obviously you were aware of it because you set the $224 7-year rate as the base for PS Plus (= $32/yr). I used that same rate for three years (3 x $32 = $96), derp.

I'm not using the $1 upconversion exploit for the Game Pass price, nitwit. I'm using the EA Play conversion I just linked you. You can load up to three years with that. $30 is the standard yearly price for EA Play. However, there are $24 cards on the gray market today. You buy a year, convert to 4 months Game Pass Ultimate, rinse wash repeat up to 36 months. Furthermore, since you're converting a gray market registration today, you face no risk of that keycode being canceled at a future date (as you do with normal gray market key codes). That's the new member price. The existing member price is quoted from gray market prices for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate directly available today.

LOL at your dumb strikethroughs. I actually had to explain this to you twice.

Also, no, the upconversion exploit didn't cost $100. That wasn't part of my table. I was discussing historic pricing. That exploit/promotion first appeared way, way back in June 2019. Back then, you could procure 12-month Xbox Live Gold cards for anywhere from $26-$36 depending on the best available pricing on the gray markets at any given time. I took the average, ~$33, which was a typical price you'd see, and multiplied by three. So you would buy 3 years Xbox Live Gold, and then upconvert all remaining time in the balance on your account for $1. Thus, for $100 you'd have three years of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. That runs $2.78/mo for those who followed my postings, and sprung on the deal.

Also, the fact I get Game Pass Ultimate for free isn't related to any of these deals or promotions or exploits. It doesn't cost me a dime. Why? Because I've figured out how to work the system. You manage to be cheap, and suck at being cheap at the same time.

*Edit*
Oh, and checking physical cards, there are still plenty of Game Pass Ultimate deals on eBay for existing members, so my $10/mo figure was too high (for those who still pay for this stuff). Even existing members can procure it for $6/mo if we look at these excess code reseller rates:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/XBOX-LIVE-...273413?hash=item1aad937b45:g:2HIAAOSwNWxfHaKD
 
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yeah it’s kind of impossible to argue that Gamepass is a bad value without sounding silly. I get it that at the time of writing it may be a little less appealing if you e games through out all these generations and there isn’t a lot of older games you want to play I guess. The only real argument for Sony though is that for now they do still have the superior exclusives, which is a legit argument.

It will be interesting to see how game pass developes. How quickly games get added to the catalog and what not. Right now I’m not really interested in it, but I have a ludicrously enormous steam library of games I’ve yet to play

It is worth to note that I never said Gamepass was a bad value. I've repeatedly stated if you're a new console gamer then Gamepass is the way to go.

But for a gamer like me who plays on multiple platforms and also possesses a gigantic backlogs of unplayed game on Steam, Epic, Nintendo Switch, and PS+ I see absolutely no reason to be paying an additional $15/mo subscription because I'll still be paying for most of the games I want to play even without a Gamepass...

Hell I just browsed the list of anticipated games for 2021 and these are the games I am looking forward to

https://www.polygon.com/features/22203238/games-of-2021-most-anticipated-best-upcoming

Back 4 Blood
Diablo 4
Dying Light 2
Elden Ring
Far Cry 6
God of War
Halo Infinite
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Horizon Forbidden West

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
RE Village

Returnal

These are the ones I am thinking of buying at a quick glance. Bolded are definite purchases. Aside from Halo Infinite how many of these do you think will be on day 1 Game Pass? My guess is zero. Granted there could be more games I might be interested later on as I see more trailers but as of now if I can't even get more than one GPU game on my wishlist for this year why even bother with GPU?
 
I'm excited for PS Now in the next few years. I tried it when it first started where you could only play ps3 game via streaming an it frankly sucks because it takes a long time to load and is missing most of the modern features like sleep mode, but then they started adding ps4 games for download and it's great.
 
Oh, I missed it, but I went back to review the official blog post when I ran through my RSS feed tonight. Turns out that not only did Xbox not raise prices on the Xbox Live Gold, but they committed to giving Xbox owners a new feature as a mea culpa.
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2021/01/22/update-on-xbox-live-gold-pricing/
-Xbox blog said:
[UPDATED on 1/22/2021 at 8:52 PM PT]

We messed up today and you were right to let us know. Connecting and playing with friends is a vital part of gaming and we failed to meet the expectations of players who count on it every day. As a result, we have decided not to change Xbox Live Gold pricing.

We’re turning this moment into an opportunity to bring Xbox Live more in line with how we see the player at the center of their experience. For free-to-play games, you will no longer need an Xbox Live Gold membership to play those games on Xbox. We are working hard to deliver this change as soon as possible in the coming months.

If you are an Xbox Live Gold member already, you stay at your current price for renewal. New and existing members can continue to enjoy Xbox Live Gold for the same prices they pay today. In the US, $9.99 for 1-month, $24.99 for 3-months, $39.99 for 6-months and $59.99 for retail 12-months.

Thank you.
<JackieThumbsUp>
 
'We'll let you play your FREE games for FREE now'....{<jordan}
They let you play F2P games before for free, but not online without a subscription. That's what they're changing.

It's a step in the right direction.
 
They let you play F2P games before for free, but not online without a subscription. That's what they're changing.

It's a step in the right direction.

Something Sony already did long ago. The F2P games on PS4/PS5 can be played without PS+. Fortnite, Apex Legends, Warframe, Neverwinter, H1Z1 Battle Royal, Smite, Brawlhalla, DC Universe Online, etc...



edit: I honestly thought Xbox already did that with F2P games. Coulda sworn I read it around here long ago.. Weird...
 
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Wait Xbox used to charge people to play free games? Huh?

the online feature of F2P games. Which I think that's what most of these games are.. online games. I dunno. I don't usually play those as I avoid all F2P games generally speaking. I prefer to pay an upfront cost and not have to pay microtransaction cost throughout the game.
 
Wait Xbox used to charge people to play free games? Huh?

Not exactly. You needed an Xbox Live account to play them online.

It's always been rather stupid that they locked you out of playing online for any game, though. They're essentially scrubbing an entire feature of a game, unless you pay them. Sony even followed suit with PS+. Hopefully they're both moving in the other direction and will eventually just let people play online without any service fee. It's always been a greedy move.
 
the online feature of F2P games. Which I think that's what most of these games are.. online games. I dunno. I don't usually play those as I avoid all F2P games generally speaking. I prefer to pay an upfront cost and not have to pay microtransaction cost throughout the game.
Yeah, I suppose. I used to play DC Universe and Marvel Heroes on my PlayStation 4 and just assumed things like that were just free for everyone.
 
Not exactly. You needed an Xbox Live account to play them online.

It's always been rather stupid that they locked you out of playing online for any game, though. They're essentially scrubbing an entire feature of a game, unless you pay them. Sony even followed suit with PS+. Hopefully they're both moving in the other direction and will eventually just let people play online without any service fee. It's always been a greedy move.
I guess it kinda makes sense. Like if you buy a guy you'll still need to pay for the online service. I just assumed it was the same across both consoles.
 
I guess it kinda makes sense. Like if you buy a guy you'll still need to pay for the online service. I just assumed it was the same across both consoles.

Other than F2P, it's essentially the same thing with both. Sony had universal free online with the PS3, but I guess they thought it was dumb to leave all that money on the table and adjusted their model accordingly.

Of all the things PC gamers make fun of console gamers for, the whole paying to play online thing is an undeniable joke on the console side of things.
 
I'd really like to buy the new consoles but I will not give money to scalpers. Also if anyone finds an RTX 3090 let me know
 




Two more releases, two more victories for the Xbox. The tally of better-performing games has already swung decisively to the Xbox side less than six months from launch. It isn't close, anymore.

But that isn't the big news. The big news is the level of performance gain we now realize is possible with a few of those latest DX12U tools. These are only available on the XSX.
Mesh shaders can boost FPS on current graphics cards by up to a massive 1800%
By dynamically adjusting the LOD (Level of Detail) in a scene, players can not only benefit from much better performance, but also far more detailed objects and complex geometry. There’s a lot more to it than that, but think of this as the kind of Layman’s terms explanation: essentially, Mesh Shaders = Better Performance, without losing any detail whatsoever.

A quick disclaimer though:
although many graphics cards have been tested with the Mesh Shader feature test already including AMD’s RX 6000 GPUs, a recent driver for AMD significantly improved Mesh Shader performance for AMD cards. So unfortunately we only have one RX 6000 GPU tested compared to many other Nvidia cards. Still though, we can see the massive performance boost. (also if you want to test this yourself download the latest AMD driver for more accurate performance results).

As you can see, the RTX 3080 gets much better overall FPS numbers at 65.93fps compared to AMD’s 27.51fps when the Mesh Shaders are turned off, then again when Mesh Shaders are turned on with Nvidia’s GPU reaching 567.59fps compared to AMD’s 496.19fps.

But it’s the percentage difference that really hammers home the performance boost, as the RTX 3080 had an increase of 860.95%, whilst the RX 6800 XT got a massive 1803.65% FPS boost. That’s, quite frankly, absolutely nuts.
Of course, the XSX has an AMD RX 6000 series custom GPU inside it.

Sony originally hedged by stating they used a "custom solution", but we later learned they used the more primitive RDNA 1.0 shaders that don't offer mesh shading. Sony also confirmed the PS5 doesn't do VRS or sampler feedback (which is necessary for technologies like NVIDIA's DLSS).

The question with features like these is always one of support, but this is where console capability is a market driver. DX12 (like Vulkan) has received pitiful support on PC since its launch in 2015, for example, but that is more rapidly changing now that both consoles launched with DX12 capability. Meanwhile, VRS and more advanced mesh shading launched in late 2018 with the RTX 2000 series of GPUs on PC. Those now combine with the XSX/XSS to drive game software development support.
 




Two more releases, two more victories for the Xbox. The tally of better-performing games has already swung decisively to the Xbox side less than six months from launch. It isn't close, anymore.

But that isn't the big news. The big news is the level of performance gain we now realize is possible with a few of those latest DX12U tools. These are only available on the XSX.
Mesh shaders can boost FPS on current graphics cards by up to a massive 1800%

Of course, the XSX has an AMD RX 6000 series custom GPU inside it.

Sony originally hedged by stating they used a "custom solution", but we later learned they used the more primitive RDNA 1.0 shaders that don't offer mesh shading. Sony also confirmed the PS5 doesn't do VRS or sampler feedback (which is necessary for technologies like NVIDIA's DLSS).

The question with features like these is always one of support, but this is where console capability is a market driver. DX12 (like Vulkan) has received pitiful support on PC since its launch in 2015, for example, but that is more rapidly changing now that both consoles launched with DX12 capability. Meanwhile, VRS and more advanced mesh shading launched in late 2018 with the RTX 2000 series of GPUs on PC. Those now combine with the XSX/XSS to drive game software development support.

Releases? These are still last gen games running BC on next gen hardware via patch. They are not next gen releases in any shape.

Your lack of sincerity is staggering lol.
 
Is the dumbest adage parroted by bitter sony ponies who have no lives. I own a ps 4 and am a fan of both and want both companies to do well like the 7th gen. Xbox does have games. It's just Sony has them beat on quality and quantity. This was a big issue in gen 8.

My question is, going forward, what kind of games would you like to see being made and or revived by Microsoft only Microsoft's ecosystem (they can also share with nintendo, since they're cool with Nintendo)? I've noticed that the titles xbox is pushing is fairly diverse. But there are holes. No... Third person action, few jrpgs and not enough hack n slashes. What would like them see lock onto their ecosystem? I personally wish they'd make a jetset radio future sequel or a sunset overdrive spiritual successor and a ninja gaiden spiritual successor.
 
PS5 has a massive display problem — Sony needs to fix this now
Non-HDR images do not look good on PS5, and there's currently no fix
The PS5 has a major problem with how it displays non-HDR content — and there's currently no fix available for it.

While many games and videos these days are designed to be viewed in high dynamic range (HDR) format, it is possible to disable the HDR function on the PS5 and instead view content in SDR (standard dynamic range) format. However research by Alexander Battaglia and John Linneman of tech analysis brand Digital Foundry has found that doing so will lead to less than optimum results.

The problem is that in SDR mode, the console renders darks at a significantly higher brightness than it should. The best example of this issue we have comes from YouTuber Tim Rogers, whose OLED TV looks more like an LCD TV when playing Demon’s Souls on a PS5 set to display in SDR mode.

According to Linneman, responding to Rogers' tweet about it, the issue is that the PS5 uses a reduced color space when operating in SDR mode — and that could explain why the darks look particularly bad when not rendered in HDR. Why the console does this remains a mystery.


One might read the final paragraph of the article, and think this is a purely theoretical issue...
Playing games in HDR is one of the biggest selling points of the PS5, and most televisions released in the last few years include the feature as standard, so this might not be an issue that will impact most PS5 gamers.

What's more, the PS5 automatically enables HDR even for content that doesn’t support a high-dynamic range, so unless you actively go looking for this issue, you shouldn’t encounter the problem.
However, that only means you won't encounter the SDR output issue if you deliberately output in SDR (on any display). That doesn't mean that viewing content automatically rendered by the PS5 in HDR is ideal (either for the content or the display). If content wasn't natively composited in HDR, this results in poorer image quality. If your TV/display isn't capable of HDR, then viewing the content in HDR may suffer issues of washout or banding. It is superior to output SDR content if a display is only SDR-capable.

What this means if that if you are a prospective buyer of the PS5 who owns an SDR TV, you should consider:
  1. Upgrading to an HDR TV
  2. Waiting to buy the PS5 until this issue is resolved
  3. Buying a different gaming console that won't have issues on your TV
 
PS5 has a massive display problem — Sony needs to fix this now
Non-HDR images do not look good on PS5, and there's currently no fix



One might read the final paragraph of the article, and think this is a purely theoretical issue...

However, that only means you won't encounter the SDR output issue if you deliberately output in SDR (on any display). That doesn't mean that viewing content automatically rendered by the PS5 in HDR is ideal (either for the content or the display). If content wasn't natively composited in HDR, this results in poorer image quality. If your TV/display isn't capable of HDR, then viewing the content in HDR may suffer issues of washout or banding. It is superior to output SDR content if a display is only SDR-capable.

What this means if that if you are a prospective buyer of the PS5 who owns an SDR TV, you should consider:
  1. Upgrading to an HDR TV
  2. Waiting to buy the PS5 until this issue is resolved
  3. Buying a different gaming console that won't have issues on your TV


There is a fix coming supposedly according to Evil Boris
 
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