Is your current gen library a major factor in your next gen hardware choice?

Sort of important to me, but also not really, weirdly enough. I'm pretty sure I'd buy both consoles eventually, simple because they exist, but I probably wouldn't have gotten a PS5 pre-ordered if it wasn't backwards compatible. I don't trust that my launch PS4 will last another year or two of extensive use. My Xbox One seems fine though, so the plan there is to hold out on getting a Series X until the catalogue of next-gen games fills out.

Skipped the PS4/Xbone gen. Chose a Series X for a few reasons, including the very clear communication up until that point regarding backwards compatibility. Cough cough.

I didn't get anything from the last gen but with a mighty 360 library (most on backwards compatibility) that I've not readily accessed this current gen I would very much like to hop back in with a Series X finances depending (so maybe in 2022).

I know both consoles have gone for a "fully backwards compatible with the previous generation" angle but I feel like Microsoft is the only one of the two that's really gotten out there and proved how much that's a part of their strategy. For Sony it just seems like a tag on in order to stay competitive.

I’m in the boat of planning on eventually getting both consoles, but I decided to get the Series X at launch and PS5 later simply because I trust Microsoft more to honor past purchases. Which is a bit ironic, because at the start of the current gen I would have considered Sony the better of the two with cross buy and PS Plus allowing for a smoother transition than the launch X1. Unfortunately, with the recent news of Sony discontinuing web support for the Vita and PS3 storefronts, the mighty sure have fallen imo.

Over 300 Xbox games in my library (X1 and back-compat 360, including games from Gold) plus Game Pass on top of that made it a no-brainer to stick with the Series X.

Never got a PS4 this gen, so will probably get a PS5 at some point, maybe in a few years if they get a bit cheaper.

Going into 2020 I had planned to sell my guitar equipment that I wasn’t using. I was planning to get both consoles to add to my collection. Collection is currently at 24 which includes the classic minis, modern, and vintage consoles with the Analogue NT mini on the way. As I was preparing guitars for selling I ended playing more than ever. I added one guitar, 4 amps, 8 effect pedals to my collection and I’m currently building my own speaker cabinets for a stack.

Gaming just wasn’t the escape I needed this year. I don’t know why it just seemed like a boring waste of my time. I kept up with the Beastcast and CAGcast but that was it. I dusted off Ratchet and Clank and enjoyed that last week and will continue with that. My thought on the new consoles is to get the XSX and eliminate all other Xboxes in the house because of backwards compatibility. My other reason to switch is Game Pass because I’m done collecting games that just take up room and that I don’t have time for.

XSX for me. Even if gaming has taken a backseat in my life to guitar and woodworking I still want to play Horizon at some point so I might get a PS5.

Going into 2020 I had planned to sell my guitar equipment that I wasn’t using. I was planning to get both consoles to add to my collection. Collection is currently at 24 which includes the classic minis, modern, and vintage consoles with the Analogue NT mini on the way. As I was preparing guitars for selling I ended playing more than ever. I added one guitar, 4 amps, 8 effect pedals to my collection and I’m currently building my own speaker cabinets for a stack.

Gaming just wasn’t the escape I needed this year. I don’t know why it just seemed like a boring waste of my time. I kept up with the Beastcast and CAGcast but that was it. I dusted off Ratchet and Clank and enjoyed that last week and will continue you that. My thoughts on consoles are to get and XSX and eliminate all other Xboxes in the house because of backwards compatibility. Game Pass is my second reason to switch because I’m done collecting games that just take up room and that I don’t have time for.

XSX for me. Even if gaming has taken a backseat in my life to guitar and woodworking I still want to play Horizon at some point so I might get a PS5.

All my PS4 games are discs and the digital PS5 is the only one I could justify affording :-(

Most game pass stuff is on PC, so the Series S makes a cheap way to play the ones that don't. But then stuff like MLB The Show 2022 Xbox Edition will end up costing me $70 rather than $39 two weeks after it comes out at GameStop :-(

Not really. I have about the same amount of games on the "old" consoles, and will get both of the new consoles. I do enjoy most of the Playstation exclusives and the One X became my multiplatform machine when that came out, so both.

I've got a bunch of PS4 games in the digital library, but also I have a PS4 to play them on.

It'd be "nice" to consolidate those games with a hypothetical PS5 library, sure, but not enough to decide a generation for me.

I'm somewhere between the "Somewhat" and "Not at all" options on the poll, any eventually went with the latter. I have my PS4 Pro and likely won't be selling that, and I totally skipped XBOX for this generation because they didn't really have any exclusives that I had to have, and all third-party titles play just fine on my PS4 Pro that I don't feel the need to have an XBOX One X as well.

Also, I feel like I've kind of come to terms with my gaming habits recently, and that is that I rarely go back and play games I've already beat. There's a few exceptions, like Dark Souls or Bloodborne or Ocarina of Time, that I've played over and over again, but that's a real small portion of my overall gaming library. As such, back compat isn't really that important to me, though a PS5 would serve me much better in that regards versus a Series X. And honestly based on launch and launch window games, I'm in the PS5 camp anyways, though I probably won't be getting one at launch since I can't pre-order one where I am, and I'm not desperate enough to get scalped.

tl;dr - My current gen library is not a factor at all, would have eventually bought a PS5 even if it couldn't play a single PS4 game.

i've never really approached new consoles with the intention of playing previous gen software- so an older llibrary doesn't factor into my purchasing decisions. if i'm pulling the trigger, it's because the new software ecosystem is robust enough to push me over the edge.

that said- previous gen IP/franchises seeing new iterations in new hardware- that very much factors into my purchasing decisions. but that's less about a library and more 1st party devs.

Certainly. I don't often go back and play old games but with certain big releases, I enjoy going back and at least playing half of a campaign, or jumping back into levels I really enjoyed if that's an option, to sort of rev up my anticipation. Like before TLoUII came out, I played Uncharted 4 up to the open world Madagascar section for the first time since it came out and had a blast, or before DOOM Eternal I played 2016 up through the first Hell level to get myself back in an FPS rhythm (and inadvertently prepping myself for a big let down).

Before whatever Wolfenstein III is comes out, I'd probably like to play through at least New Collosus, if not New Order as well on Easy just to rekindle the story beats.

Because of certain oddities of the PS4 (like having a copy of P.T. on it and all the account information tied to the console) I'm a little conflicted about whether or not I'll sell the console (the PS3 is the first console I didn't sell pretty much immediately after upgrading because I'm lazy enough that simply refreshing to factory settings was too much of a hassle!) but the backwards compatibility is certainly a step toward considering it.

I would say it's a key factor. I have a lot of Xbox One games, including a fair-sized backlog, and the idea that I can play them on the Series X with better frame rates and load times when I get it in November is very tantalizing. Plus, hearing that the PS5 seems to be compatible with all the PS4 games I own makes me more interested in getting it sooner rather than later, though I plan to wait and see how well the BC works on PS5.

I usually hold on to older consoles for a while, but this may be the first time I get rid of them when I get the new ones, (I already plan to give my sister my One X) and that's purely due to BC.

I voted "Somewhat" - While I'm open to the idea of a box that plays PS4 games and doesn't require large speakers or headphones for dramatic tension to be present or a box that lets me experience Gamepass with my TV(And isn't a jury-rigged Steamlink), I need to see more of the new games on both. Or the upgrades on the old games. They(On both) seem cool. I need to know more about how cool they are. Me bangin' a drum, I know, but it's still where I'm at.

With next gen consoles being backwards compatible, that's none of my worries.
Also I did plan to keep my PS4 after getting PS5 so that would be no issue at all.

With the weak launch lineup and basically very little exciting new games on the horizon I would say that my current library of games, and more specifically seeing how they will perform on this new hardware, is the only reason I'm excited for Next-Gen at the moment. There are a few games I really want to launch and see the improvements first hand like Sekiro or like Monster Hunter - compare the framerate and the load times. With time this will be a less relevant draw as new games come back and the current library slowly fades into the distance. Still it is great to know that the games I'm running now I can always revisit on the upcoming hardware and they will receive a significant boost in performance and sometimes visuals when applicable. With such a weak opening I think backwards compatibility and Game Pass especially are going to be key factors for early adopters.

I said not at all, because I doubt I'll be going back to any of my PS4 games again. But I see why it would be a concern. Really, as gaming becomes more "mature", I think backwards compatibility will be more important. My DVD or Blu-Ray player can still play DVDs from 20 years ago, and movies from then don't seem like they are some more primitive medium. As games become more and more capable of photorealistic graphics, the gain seen from more computing horsepower gives diminishing returns, and the ability to play older games will seem more and more attractive.

The current PS4 library of exclusive titles definitely has me leaning toward a PS5.

As a One X owner I'm hoping that gamepass will carry me through at least most of the next year without having to upgrade.

Currently I'm having serious trouble commiting to either new console considering the utter lack of dedicated "next generation" games on the immediate horizon.

I don't see why it would be. It's not like I'm getting rid of my PS4 when I get a new console, and my TV has enough inputs to just keep it plugged in. If I have a dying urge to play my PS4 library, it's not going to be that hard to do.

Plus, after this generation, I'm sick to death of remasters, remakes, enhancements, and enhanced remakes of the remaster. If a year or two into this generation the only things on offer are "last gen's game but now 60 fps" then there's a damn big problem somewhere along the line.

@therealturk: Yah but theoretically with these new consoles not only can you play those old games but they will also run better. So you will no longer have to use up inputs on your tv and take up physical space by keeping the old box hooked up.

I own way too many games on PS4 and not being able to play them on PS5 would be a massive bummer.

I own like 60 PS4 games and only two of them aren't playable on PS5. As for Xbox One, I have like 120 games from Gold, etc though haven't gone through what's compatible with Series X.

As someone who skipped the PS4 Pro, it's my number one consideration. I own about 5 games that my base PS4 either runs too loudy or poorly, or given the popularity of souls likes it's one that requires constant death and simply has too poor load times to suffer through. God of War is one that comes to mind for me where I got about 5 hours in and couldn't keep suffering through those load times. There are even a few base games that I heard ran so badly on it that I just didn't even bother checking out, like Control.

I know a lot of folks are really bummed about launch software and that always happens when new consoles launch for the most part, but given the backlog of quality games I already have and the few things I saved or waited to play honestly I'm not too hurting for new content to play once the new consoles arrive.

My Xbox One has been a dedicated Rock Band machine for years, I'm locked in.

You would have to be really annoyed to switch platforms in most cases. For instance I don't know anyone who switches between iPhone and Android phone on a whim - except tech bloggers. The same has to be true of consoel gamers. It is are tahta sea change happens and they happen when there is a problem in the console world.

Playstation took off in 1995-1999 because it honestly WAS a better overall system than Jaguar, Saturn, and N64. The brands of Nintendo and Sega had HUAGE pull, but that was not stronger than they obvious advantages of PS in that games industry. [Why Playstation was better, fills a book, but it suffices to say Sony CHANGED how games were bought and sold in Japan, North American and Europe. That change was how games on disc changed how games were manufactured, distributed, weahoused, and sold in stores.]

Xbox 360 took off because it honestly was a better system, at the start at least, than PS3. The strength that SOny built up with PS and PS2 was not as strong as the earlier release date, stronger more logical hardware of 360, Xbox Live and Gamer Score. You could almost say XB360 changed how the average video game was played, how it went online, how you found other people to play with, etc....huge social change that just made sense.]

PS4 was again the better overall system and Sony had a better vision of what videos games were. Sony had teh right plan, had the right hardware, and made teh better "sales pitch" to gamers. Sony was selling a commodity {video games} to 'people who play games', Microsoft was selling 'the people who games' to other corporations like ables companies and the NFL in a B2B transaction. The power of the PS4 hardware and the price where important, but what people rejected was becoming the 'commodity' instead of the 'buyer' even if they could not say it in so many words. The 'cow' knows what a slaughter house is even if cow culture is mostly about eating grass and avoiding wolves...the cow knows!

Not at all.

Backwards compatibility has never been a real concern for me because it's rare that I go back and replay older games. The Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect are the two series I can think of that I've replayed several times. I have them on PC, so their console compatibility isn't a concern.

I moved to the other side of the world with two suitcases in 2014, left my Xbox 360 + games behind.

Eventually I wanted to get a new console again, and was planning on getting a PlayStation 4. But ended up with an Xbox One S instead (because we had some friends here with Xbox). Turning that on for the first time, logging into my account after two years stuck on an outdated gaming laptop and seeing all my XBLA games there made me suddenly appreciate my digital library a whole lot more.

On paper, if you don't play multiplayer, probably the best approach is to switch from Xbox to PS and back every generation -- so you can eventually play all the exclusives you want to play. But in practice I don't have time for that, so I'll stick with Xbox just because that's where my games are.

no , i left the xbox eco system when it comes to consoles after i had 3 360s with unreadable disc drive, the xbox one had no actual exclusives i wanted enough to justify the sytem and since i have a gaming PC and gamepass now the series x has nothing to offer to me except backward compatibility for 360 and OG xbox games and i don't own any anymore so that is why i won't be going with that system.

on the flip side sony has exclusives i like usually/still so i will be getting a ps5 for that reason.

Perhaps I'm a rube, but I'd almost spend $300 on JUST making the games I currently own, and any I buy in the future, run better. SO I'm pretty sure I'm square in the crosshairs of demographics this upcoming console cycle is targeting.

I always end up with every console, but looking at my collection, I have over 300 PS4 games, and 12 Xbox One games. I never bought into the half step consoles, so I preordered a PS5 based almost entirely on the fact that it will probably make some of the PS4 games I have look/run better. Cyberpunk comes out a week after the PS5 so I might not even get to playing a native PS5 game until next year.