It’s a remarkable misstep that conjures uncomfortable echoes of the similarly slab-like PlayStation 3 and the subsequent years during which Sony squandered the seemingly unassailable market share accumulated by the PlayStation and its successor to Microsoft’s sprightlier upstart, the Xbox 360. Back then Sony badly misjudged the burgeoning appeal of online gaming and by the time it caught on the race had been lost.
Almost a decade and half later, the Japanese giant finds itself at a potentially similar juncture. The PlayStation 4 dominated the previous gaming generation but their resilient rival from Redmond has rallied for another assault. The Xbox Series X, released a week earlier than the PS5 in the UK is a sleeker and, on paper at least, more powerful machine with an array of clever cloud gaming features to tempt modern gamers.
Sony have largely eschewed such ephemera (for now) and are instead going all-in on tactile immersion. It’s a risky strategy, seemingly derived from a belief that in this digitally disparate age where entertainment experiences are derived from a sea of platform-agnostic service providers, consumers will cling to premium pieces of hardware like life rafts.
Viewed through that lens perhaps the PS5’s overpowering physical presence makes sense, serving as an extremely literal antithesis to the ubiquitous ‘cloud’. Yet it’s the console’s new controller, dubbed DualSense, which best illustrates the benefits of tactility. Like everything else in this new era it’s not cheap – an additional one will set you back a penny or two under £60 – but in this case you definitely get what you pay for.
Source: The Telegraph Travels
