Road to NextGen Gaming
The “PS5/XSS/XSX are basically PCs” Myth
Common tech, different philosophies: what it means, why it matters
Enjoying second rounds? Blasts from the past? How about deja vu trips? For many people who went through the launch period of PS4/Xbox One in 2013 — and went through the launch period of the PS5/Xbox Series S|X recently — these past few months must feel oddly, uncomfortably, even annoyingly familiar. A lot of articles published by a lot of outlets go on and on about “the PC-like upgrades of the new PlayStation and Xbox”, about their “evolutionary architecture working just like the one established by PCs” or even about how “home consoles are now basically PCs”.
Comparing the PS5/XSS/XSX subsystems to hardware just now appearing on PCs seems to be an easy, natural thing for some of those outlets. Finding the consoles at a disadvantage even more so. The PC Master Race can go through those articles, feel good about itself and sleep soundly at night, safe in the knowledge that its choice of platform remains technologically superior. Mission accomplished.
In the minds of some it’s 2013 all over again, it seems, as if the last eight years have not proven anything regarding custom hardware, custom software, fixed specs and development tools. CPUs are CPUs, GPUs are GPUs, disks are disks… and so home entertainment systems, like the new PlayStation and Xbox, are just middle-of-the-road, mass-produced personal computers with some fancy casing. Right?
Wrong. The “PS5/XSS/XSX are basically PCs” mantra is not just a myth. It is a failure in understanding how modern consumer products are designed and targeted, it is a terrible disservice to the hard work of dozens of people at Sony and Microsoft, it is an exercise in futility that invites pointless comparison and fanboyism. Let us thoroughly dismantle it.
Common tech: just the starting point
All myths are based on something true and this one is no different: for the last 8 years, the PS4/PS4 Pro and Xbox One S/X did indeed use components originally designed for personal computers, as do the PS5 and Xbox Series S|X (and their successors most probably will too). AMD provided that hardware platform back…
