How is your launch experience?

Hi!

How are you enjoying the launch so far?

I bought a new TV-stand to prepare for the Sony Fatstation but I was still suprised by the size of the beast. No 4K or HDR yet (soon) but the games are fun in their own right (Astrobot and Demon's).

DS sound design and animations swept me right off my feet by the way. The game use the rumble in really nice ways as well. The vibrations often work as a sort of warning sign of certain attacks.

The PS5 has the "playstation feel" but also feels really Nintendo inspired and playful. Comfort wize the dualsense finally matches the xbox controllers for me (if you prefer smaller and lighter ones you might not be a fan).

Only negative is the new menu/shortcuts (they aren't really shortcuts...)

I've really enjoyed my Series X so far. It feels just like an Xbox, but every aspect is a little bit or much better. The reduced load times are fantastic and have really cut back on my social media use. Quick resume has also been more useful than I was anticipating. A couple of days ago I fired up Halo:MCC and was surprised to see it jump me straight into the mission I'd been playing maybe 4-5 days before.

The lack of proper launch games has been a bummer for sure, but I've been able to keep myself plenty busy with Yakuza 7, Tetris and some older games like Halo and Forza Horizon 4 which I've jumped back into thanks to the upgrades.

Oh, and seeing games running in 4K 120fps with HDR and VRR and all those other things on an OLED sure is a pleasant experience.

@isomeri: Yeah I imagine the Series X as being let lose in a candy store with no restrictions as a five year old. Must be hard not to jump around from game to game to check things out.

Kind of miss that aspect on the PS5, Sony's backwards compatibility is not that exciting.

Searching online trying to get a console.

I have a great Pc but I still want an X and PS5 because I’m bored I guess? Bad reason. I think the X would be cool to have access to Xbox games you can’t get on PC.

Anyone have a PC and X? How did you justify what SEEMS like double dipping?

I have a series X and so far...it's been the least exciting console I've ever owned.

Part of it is that my console seems to have a rare bug that means it can't go into Instant On mode (it always shuts down completely and cannot be turned back on by controller, only by pressing the button) and it also shuts itself off whenever the screen is supposed to dim, meaning that if I leave it idle it shuts down completely (no background downloads, nothing.) It also seems to interfere with the instant resume feature, though that has been buggy in general so I'm not sure if it's caused by the same issue or something else, but it hasn't been working well at all. Since that's the Xbox Series killer app I'm not enjoying that.

In addition I have experienced an audio bug a few times that causes the sound to get choppy and then cut out completely before restarting. This has probably happened 3-4 times in about 10-15 hours of use.

I'm hoping that all of these are just software issues (other people aren't able to get the console OUT of Instant On mode so I'm hoping my power issues relate to the console not recognizing settings properly and can be solved in the next patch) but I may have to send this thing in for repairs, which sucks.

In terms of actually using the box when it's on...Forza Horizon 4 looks great and Dirt 5 looks even better but I just haven't felt like playing it much. I don't know how much of that is the console's "fault" and how much is just that I'm not in the mood to play games right now. I'm hoping Cyberpunk will shake me out of this gaming malaise, or Fenyx Rising if it's very good I guess, but right now I've been mostly playing Need For Speed: The Run, which is a very bad game, on my 360, which shows just how into the X I am. I'm not even playing backwards compatible games on it, I'm just mostly not using it except to stream video, which it does fine.

I'm still bullish on the X and glad I got one. I had a reasonable amount of fun with Dirt 5 for a while. I'm not really bashing the thing (except for my issues with the power settings, which suck but may be due to a bum unit) but it's very much an incremental upgrade, like Xbox One base to Xbox One X was.

Frankly the biggest quality of life improvement I have experienced from owning the Series X has been being able to move my Xbox One X to the TV I use with my treadmill to replace my Amazon Fire Stick. The One X is a perfect streaming box and I can even check email and forums while I workout because it has a decent web browser. I've really loved that.

If they patch the machine so it recognizes my power settings and fix instant resume by the end of the year and if I find a game that really sucks me in I might have a totally different view before 2021, but so far I'd say that (assuming you don't have the issues I've had) it's fine and has some QOL improvements in terms of loading times etc... but you're not missing out by waiting.

@bigsocrates: Have you been using a wireless headset with your Xbox? I've been having some crazy weird bugs when using my wireless headset and it seems like, at the moment, these sorts of strange issues with wireless headsets are quite common with the Series X.

@isomeri: No headset. I've also tried plugging it into the wall, with no effect. I am convinced that there's an issue with the Series consoles recognizing power settings, at least for some consoles, and I hope a patch is incoming though Microsoft hasn't said anything on their official support forums (I've seen other users with issues like mine on Reddit or whatever.)

In terms of the audio glitches...those I'd imagine are just because the drivers need to be updated and are less of a concern to me.

When my console is on and in use it's fine 99% of the time, except for quick resume, which is a known problem that they'll fix, and not being able to use instant on or turn my console on with a controller hasn't been a massive problem, but these kinds of glitches plus no big new games just dampen the experience.

It's just early adopter shit.

I just got my X yesterday and I am liking it so far, I kind of can't get over how fast the thing is. The PS4 Pro would take a good 20-30 seconds to get to the sign in screen, even from just sleep mode. The XSX boots faster than my TV will start up. The only big negative so far is the controller, which is one of the least comfortable things I've ever held and is a major downgrade from the PS4 controller. I don't know whose hands it supposed to fit, but it sure isn't mine.

@therealturk: What do you find uncomfortable about it? It's basically a very slightly smaller Xbox One controller with textured grips, an improved D-pad, and one extra button. Granted I have big meathook hands and am the only person on Earth who found The Duke comfortable, but it's such a popular design that even Nintendo copied it almost exactly for the Switch Pro controller. Maybe you just need to adjust to offset sticks?

@bigsocrates: @therealturk: I'm bummed that they made the new controller smaller. All the other upgrades, especially the new D-pad, are major improvements but the ergonomics definitely took a step back for me. I didn't fully notice it until I picked up an older Xbox One controller and realized how much better it feels in my, admittedly large, hands. And yes, I am also one of those people who liked the Duke controller. Now I'm kind of hoping to pick up a Series 2 Elite controller on sale somewhere to get a combination of the nice D-pad and grips and so on with the older slightly larger ergonomics.

I love the series x so far. This feels like a humbled Microsoft getting a re-do. This is how the X1 should have felt when it launched.

Really excited for this generation of games. The consoles are powerful and show a lot of promise for the future. We finally have SSDs and modern CPUs in these things. Hopefully that let's developers branch out and get a bit more creative with game design. Furthermore, with games like Anthem and Avengers absolutely bombing, hopefully we'll see publishers dial back on the focus on games-as-a-service and get back to tighter single player narrative experiences. I know I'm naïve and optimistic about that last point, but I can see it happening.

Spent a hell of a lot of time just trying to buy a PS5 and finally succeeded yesterday. Which, have to say, say what you will about Sony mishandling pre-orders and whatnot, but at least they're providing pretty much the only way to buy the console where you don't have to worry about scalpers as much. Pretty much just took trying their daily queue enough times until I was eventually at the front. Granted, that was a week, but there was pretty much no hope trying to buy from every other retailer with their sites crashing.

Anyway, I don't have it at my place yet so can't give impressions. But just in general I feel like I'm more looking forward to playing PS4 games that will run better than they do on my old base PS4. More so than I'm looking forward to PS5 games right now. Demon's Souls looks great and I'll be playing it and Miles Morales, but I've been holding off on stuff like Ghost of Tsushima until I could play it on PS5. Even just having better (hopefully) load times on Monster Hunter World would be nice. And while its no game pass, the collection they're offering has a few heavy hitting titles that I never bought on ps4. Might give God of War a spin finally.

Also the more I hear about it the more I think I'd love Yakuza Like a Dragon? So I might try that out as well.

I'm having a good time with my PS5. Loved Astro's Playroom, and having fun with Bugsnax and Miles Morales. I think I'm the only person who didn't think it was all that crazy big. It fits in my TV stand horizontally with a little room to spare. It's about the same size as my (soon to be donated/sold) 4K Blu-ray player, though an inch or two thicker.

The Xbox Series X, on the other hand, I did not buy, because it's shaped like a PC instead of like an A/V unit, and with its smallest dimension being 6" it will definitely not fit in my TV stand. Unfortunate.

I do echo what the GB crew have said about the PS5 UI though. It's a bit weird how many ways it feels like a step backwards. The trophy page is unusable, no patch notes, harder to put into rest mode, and this morning I went to look at their "black Friday" sales and I couldn't find a section in the PS5 store app to simply see everything that's on sale. Hopefully they will hear feedback and work on updating some of these things (though with backwards-compatible PS4 games still having patch notes, I'm thinking that was a deliberate choice for some reason, and not merely an oversight).

@isomeri: It's sort of strange in that I find the Series X controller simultaneously too large and too small. On the one hand (hah) the thumb sticks feel like they were built for someone with much larger hands than I have and I feel like I need to stretch too much to use them. On the other, the handles feel way too small, and I my bottom two fingers are kind of dangling off the bottom. This means that it feels like its slipping up and out of my grip constantly, sort of like holding a slippery ice-cream cone or something.

The result is I've got to kind of hold it over the top in this claw death-grip, which gives me pretty bad cramps after not that long. My Series X was part of a bundle that came with an Elite, so maybe I'll try that? I've kept in the box so far because I'm not usually a fan of controllers with a ton of frills on them, but if it's got sturdier handles, maybe it'll solve some of my problems.

I know realistically it's a huge jump in some games but so far on the Series X it feels like what we should have gotten with the half step consoles. It's fun playing AC Valhalla at 60FPS and high detail textures.. but it's not a spectacular game or anything, just really sharp. I also like some of the back-compat games running and loading really fast but thats probably why it feels like a half step forward so far because I'm spending more time seeing old games run better than playing new games that looks and feel "next-gen".

Got my PS5 last night, been playing Spiderman and Demon Souls obtrusively since. The intro mission to Spiderman might be the best looking thing I have seen in a game especially the interior areas. It looks so good on my TV, I have the LG OLED from 2016. Demon souls is great too but maybe I have just played enough of these games now that I am better at them. The opening area was simple enough and I beat the first proper boss on my first attempt.

My PS5 has had a load of issues with downlands failing, I have been downloading some of the PS+ PS4 hits games and a few of the Yakuza remastered games I didn't get around to playing on the PS4. So far I have 14 games installed and 200 gigs left free on the SSD. The controller feels great in the hand. I need to mess around with Astro's playroom tomorrow.

I was somehow able to snag a PS5 on launch night for in store pickup at Target. I've really been enjoying it so far. It's really made me happy I upgraded to decent 4K this year and have something powerful to play on it. I mainly PC game so I'm also happy to see both Sony and Xbox diving so deep into SSD technology and making it finally a pretty on-par experience with PC gaming especially at 4K.

Astro's Playroom, while easy, was still the first game I've ever gotten to Platinum because of how much I enjoyed playing around in it. Such a perfect pack in game to show off the controllers new features and some fun call outs to Playstation history. Speaking of the controller, I like it way more than the DS4 so far. I'm not sure what exactly they changed with the contours or size but it just feels better to me.

Going to dive back into the Miles Spiderman game and then get Valhalla on it as well. Excited for this holiday season.

I've been playing some Doom Eternal on my Series X and I feel like the SSD makes a huge difference for that game, even though the optimized version isn't even out yet.

It loads incredibly quickly, especially the checkpoints, and while I find the game pretty frustrating and don't love it, being able to jump right back in with only a couple seconds loading takes a lot of the sting out of dying. I managed to get past the point where I was stuck in March and even a little further, and I think I'll keep it installed and try and chip away at it over time, which is basically how I finished the 2016 Doom also after a gap.

Without a lot of strong launch software this is where the Series X is doing its best work right now. Making older games load faster or have more stable frame rates or resolution or whatever. I think that this is very interesting for a console. We've seen lots of backwards compatible consoles in the past, from the Sega Genesis (with powerbase converter) to the PS2, but starting with the Xbox One X we're seeing consoles that don't just play old games but make them substantially better.

It really is the PC model. Buy hardware to make all your games better, not to play exclusives.

I have been loving my PS5 for the most part. The dashboard needs some work for sure, but that is really my only big complaint. The controller is amazing and Astro's Playroom proves it. I got the platinum for it already. What a cool pack-in game!

And then of course there is Demon's Souls and Miles Morales. Right off the bat they both look phenomenal and play great at 60 fps. The load times are absurd. I keep reaching for my phone out of habit, but I don't need to anymore! It's crazy.

I haven't had any of the rest mode issues yet, but my roommate did so there's that to worry about. I've really enjoyed the launch so far.

Kids. Having three kids who are also into games justifies it for me.

We got the PS5 and Series X, and have a gaming PC too. The old consoles are now in their bedrooms.

Where there used to be arguments, there is now peace... mostly!

I managed to preorder both from Best Buy. I’ve spent most of my time with the PS5.

The Dual Sense controller is great. The PS5 games I’ve played have been great.

That said, I think Sony should have delayed the PS5 release in order to fix a lot of the defects in the OS. I completely understand not being able to fix everything due to the pandemic, but this has resulted in releasing an unfinished, buggy OS.

They implemented this stupid “Featured” panel that may show the sale if you’re lucky. It doesn’t automatically update while you’re looking at the store, nor is there a way to scroll features.

What you have to do is navigate out of the store and back, then you may get a different featured panel, one of which is the Black Friday sale. It may take one try, or 10+ tries, since it is completely random.

They need to implement a Deals tab.

@sergio: That sounds...utterly insane. The web store has a Deals tab but I don't see a way to filter only PS5 games, though I doubt any pure PS5 games are on sale anyway. I guess you can't look for games that have specific PS5 versions (as opposed to PS4 backwards compatible versions) either, which sucks.

The whole Playstation digital games store revision seems to have been done by someone who is very worried about physical games going away so wants to make digital games as hard to buy as possible. The old Playstation digital games storefront was bad, but this new one is abysmal. And that's just my experience with the web store trying to look for PS4 games (and bitter because they won't let me look for PS3 or Vita games on the web anymore and tried to take away my wishlist.)

@bigsocrates: The web store and App Store have “PS5 version included“ sections for the Black Friday sale, but no PS5 only.

I need to make one correction. It looks like I’m now able to refresh that features section (sometimes) by using L1/R1 to switch between tabs in the PS5 store. It doesn’t switch every time, so I was just extremely unlucky earlier.

Speaking of the app, the tiles on the phone version are ok, but the iPad version are huge.

The roll-out here has been a complete disaster. Both consoles were basically pre-ordered beyond capacity before there was any dates or prices announced and several stores has had to redact on promises of delivery. On the launch day of the PS5 a few online stores tried to have some saved for "day of" sales, but they all buckled and sales were stopped after less than 15 minutes. Some stories from the last few days include quotes like "PS5 sold by scalper for $2000" and "We had 500 units to sell and 60000 people trying to buy them".

On Xbox Series X... Forza Horizon 4, Sea of Thieves, several OG Xbox games I have that are back-compat... checking out Game Pass stuff, there's so much to look at. I'm trying to keep my library uncluttered though. So far it's very comfy! I skipped the last couple generations, so It's cool being able to participate again. The last console gen I experienced while it was relevant was the Dreamcast.

I bought the Series S primarily as a retro, indie and Gamepass console, and I'm having a ton of fun with it so far. I don't really consider it a next-gen console though, given that its less powerful than a Xbox One X that shipped years ago. It's as if I bought an Xbox One, modded in an SSD drive, and it has extended support from Microsoft (I wonder if 3rd party developers will support it after a few years). But I'm absolutely fine with that for the price I paid for it. Been playing some GTA 4, Halo CE, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Far Cry 3, Splinter Cell, and I'm still at the stage where it's hard to decide what to play because there's so much content available. All games run like a dream on backwards compatibility, though some 360 games look quite blurry when upscaled to 1080p (I guess they ran at 720p originally). GTA 4 in particular runs really well, and I couldn't get it to work on the PC due to some Games for Windows Live bullshit, so having all that in a box that just works is amazing. Metal Gear Solid 2&3 are also impossible to find on any other current platform. The original Xbox games though are really expensive, are not on Gamepass and are not even on sale for Black Friday, so that sucks. Been running into some bugs and crashes though at the UI, it definitely needs a patch or two.

Dang, I don't come on the computer much nowadays. Anyway, since I lost my job during these COVID times, I am not likely to get a new console soon. My brother, however, is hoping to get the PS5 early next year. I'm definitely excited for the next-gen. I'm finding it a bit strange that, at least it seems so far, the PS5 is running games a bit better than the Series X.

I have both the Series X and PS5. I have had no problems with either. I have one wish, and that is for the ui for the PS5 to be less.... cumbersome... im not sure if thats the right description though. The PS5 activities feature is a REALLY cool idea and i love it so far.

I got a Series X, and I'm really enjoying it! This is the first console I've bought at launch, and while it is a more incremental upgrade, I'm still having a good time. I've been playing a lot of Valhalla as my shiny game at launch, and I've also been finishing up some titles in my back catalog (I finished the first Control DLC and The Outer Worlds last night. Being able to easily carry over my Xbox One saves via the cloud is fantastic.

For me, one of the biggest things is getting a solid 60fps in certain games. Valhalla feels super smooth, and Fallen Order at 60fps is a revelation. It's honestly made it tough for me to switch to 30fps games at times, and I hope that we'll be seeing some patches to unlock frame rates on Xbox One games.

I also splurged and bought a CX OLED right before launch. While I'm still not sure I should have spent all that money, the games sure look good on it!

@misterfrodo17: enjoy that OLED!

I picked up a Series X and absolutely love it. I will eventually own them both but picked the Xbox cause I could get rid of my Scorpio One X and put that money toward it. I also don’t buy many AAA games when they first come out (maybe 2 or 3 a year), so the lack of new stuff didn’t bother me much. Game Pass is wonderful, the whole UI feels like a massive apology for the last seven years of bullshit, and all my old games run great and insanely fast so I’m having fun just going through old stuff.

Bought WRC 9 for the ps5 today, read that it made better use of the dualsense than dirt. Holy s*** racing games are hard when you haven't played one in ten years. Thought it would be a good mixer with demon's souls as a relaxing inbetween gaming but it's the other way around.

Haptics are great though.

@isomeri: yep I love my series x too, try the crysis remastered it’s amazing to see it play with RTX on and at 60fps.

Decent!

I have a gaming PC (although one of my graphics cards appears to have just kicked the bucket this week, which is convenient), but I also bought a PS5 (got lucky and landed at the front of the line on the launch day batch direct from Sony) and an Xbox Series S (I got a discount on the box and get free Game Pass Ultimate from my work), both of which I've put a moderate amount of time into.

The Xbox lineup is definitely not particularly sexy by any means, but I almost completely missed Microsoft's exclusive lineup for the last console generation, with the singular exception being playing the PC port of Sunset Overdrive (Sunset Overdrive is really good, everyone should play it), so I've managed to amuse myself by going back and hitting up a bunch of games I missed, which has been fun! Game Pass is really nice as just a sizeable library of games I can just pick and choose from to grab games I wanted to play or was even vaguely curious about with no investment. Maybe once I finish clearing out that backlog I'll be tapping my foot waiting for games to come out, but, eh.

The PS5 I'm also pretty satisfied with, TBH. I still have a lot of PS4 games I would like to play, and knowing I can just pick that up where I left off is honestly really nice. My most played game on my PS5 right now is Prey: Mooncrash, which is still really good! On some level, financially unwise as it is, I'm happy with the PS5 just as a straight upgrade to my launch PS4, let alone the new features and games. As far as games go, the launch lineup is definitely better, and I'm pretty excited for stuff close on the horizon (namely Hitman and Deathloop), so I think this thing's library has ultimately justified itself way faster than the PS4 did.

@sergio: Wow, that's so funny. I tried it and it worked... eventually. What a crazy system. Hopefully a year from now all these UI things will be corrected and we won't even remember the weird launch window jitters.

Pretty darn good.

I missed out on pre-ordering a PS5 due to the whole retailers-offering-it-a-day-early debacle, but managed to order one from Walmart on launch day during their third window of availability. It took a week to get to me, arrived on the 20th.

Demon's Souls is the one PS5 exclusive game out right now that I really cared about, and that has been as fun as I'd hoped it would be. I'm basically done with my first playthrough and am now planning to go back into the various levels and exhaust any lizard spawns, pick up anything else I may have missed, etc., before starting the next cycle. Small quibbles aside (e.g., new music generally isn't as good), Bluepoint has done an astounding job remastering this game.

But I was also excited to get a PS5 simply for the improved performance and load times of my existing games. And it's delivered there, as well. I had started playing Genshin Impact on PS4 around launch knowing that I'd eventually be transitioning to PS5. Performance on PS4 was really terrible, very framey and lots of long loads. But now the game runs at a smooth 60fps, and loads that used to take 30 seconds now take about 10 seconds, nor do I have to deal with lots of pop-in and laggy menus.

There are other games for which it seems I'll have to wait for improved performance. Overwatch seems unchanged, not sure if any sort of patch is planned for that or I'll just have to wait for Overwatch 2. And Nioh 2 will be getting a PS5 version--which as an owner of the PS4 game I can upgrade into for free--but that won't happen until early February.

I echo the GB crew in saying that the system UI could really use some work. The feature I'm probably the most annoyed about is that the upload/download save from cloud option is buried behind a lot more menus/button presses. I'm not ashamed to say I've been manually backing up my save for Demon's Souls somewhat frequently in case I somehow screw up a world tendency thing (and this did, in fact, happen once when I realized that I had killed BP Scirvir without also killing to Primeval Demon before exiting the world). Man, managing world tendency still sucks.

Anyway, I'm happy I managed to nab a console without having to wait weeks or months for the frenzy to die down. I'd never really bought a new console around launch, I'd always waited for there to be a critical mass of software I actually cared about, but the backwards compatibility and seriously improved performance on PS4 games convinced me that there was no good reason to wait. For me, just having shorter load times on Genshin Impact is worth it, since that's one of those games that encourages you to log in and play it a little every single day. The amount of time I save fast traveling around is going to add up fast.