What you need to know
- Xbox Series X is more powerful than the PlayStation 5.
- Microsoft's console has a 1.875 teraflops advantage over Sony's machine.
- It also appears to support "thousands" of backward compatible games compared to Sony's 100 or so.
- Sony's Mark Cerny wasn't clear during his presentation how many games would be backward compatible.
Updated March 20, 2020: Sony said that it plans to support the majority of PlayStation 4 games in an updated post, but the timeline is still a little unclear.
Today, Sony released its specifications for the PlayStation 5 (PS5). While the system is considerably weaker than the Xbox Series X, it does have a faster solid-state drive and also offers backward compatibility. However, it looks like it's not what everyone expected. There were rumors floating around that the PS5 would be backward compatible with every game back to the original PlayStation. That's not the case, at least according to Sony.
According to Microsoft, the Xbox Series X will be able to play "thousands" of Xbox One, Xbox 360, and original Xbox games. Plus, they get a boost to resolution, frame rate, and even colors because they have high dynamic range (HDR) colors. Unfortunately, it looks like the PS5 will only play around 100 PlayStation 4 games at launch. It's unclear if this is truly the case because Sony's Mark Cerny said something else during his "The Road to PS5" presentation.
Lastly, we're excited to confirm that the backward compatibility features are working well. We recently took a look at the top 100 PS4 titles as ranked by playtime, and we're expecting almost all of them to be playable at launch on PS5. With more than 4,000 games published on PS4, we will continue the testing process and expand backward compatibility coverage over time.
It seems like the team is adopting an approach similar to what Microsoft did with the Xbox One. However, since then Microsoft has moved on and is now promising thousands of games on Xbox Series X. It's unclear if Sony will ever catch up.
Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold in one
Xbox Game Pass gives you access to over a hundred games for one monthly fee. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate also adds Xbox Live Gold to the package so you can play online with your friends and access games.
Xbox Series X/S
Main
- Xbox Series X: Everything we know
- Best games coming to Xbox Series X/S
- List of Xbox Series X specs
- What is the Xbox Series X release date?
- How much does Xbox Series X cost?
- Why you can't preorder Xbox Series X yet
- Best Xbox Series X Headsets
