 I'm not much of a console gamer, but thankfully we've got David. He's not technically a writer here, but he was instructed to self-isolate at home, which worked out great because he needed something he could do all day. And I needed a giant PlayStation fanboy to plop himself on the couch and play as much PS5 as humanly possible. Then tell me about what Sony did right and where we'd like to see them do better. Today's video is brought to you by Ridge Wallet wants to redefine the wallet with its compact frame and RFID blocking plates. Check out how they can keep your wallet bulge down and use code Linus10 to save 10% and get free worldwide shipping at the link below. One of the most next-gen things about the PS5 is something that it doesn't share with its competition. The new Xbox controller is same, same, but better. While the DualSense controller is a huge step forward for Sony. It manages first and foremost to feel like it was designed with humans in mind rather than tiny frog people. And while the D-pad feels slightly mushy than the DualShock 4, it's not so bad as to stop you from playing precision retro titles. And it's definitely not enough to distract from the magic that lives inside. The rumble has also been updated and it's now so detailed as to differentiate your footsteps on different surfaces and also give you a sense of directionality in your hands, which is pretty neat, but nothing compared to the adaptive resistance triggers. These allow developers to more directly simulate the trigger pull of different guns, the tension of drawing a bow, or the way a gas pedal will fight you as you lose traction on a muddy road. The feedback is strong, immediate, and surprisingly immersive. So much so that you might actually find your fingers getting a little tired after an extended play session with certain games. Wow, really? David took this assignment very seriously. Anyway, his suggestion is to treat it like super cool visual effects in a call of duty title. Enjoy it for what it is in single player, then turn it off for any kind of competitive gaming. His one real complaint about the controller is a relatively minor one, but it is a good point. Wait, really Sony? Transferring your data from PlayStation 4 can be done via ethernet, or you can start fresh by using the onscreen prompts on the PlayStation app, and then that's it, you're logged in. If you've got PS Plus, your PS4 cloud saves are ready to download, then you can pop in a disc to install a game or download any game from your library and much faster than on Sony's last gen console. In fact, the whole console feels much quicker, in part due to the PS5's brand new UI. It's still fundamentally a refined version of the PS3's cross media bar, but there are some new features like remote play, which allows you to stream PS5 games to your PlayStation 4 in another room, and the game switcher that looks like Sony may have plans for some kind of quick resume like option. And then of course, there's a fresh 4K HDR veneer over everything, which helps give the PS5 a way more next gen feel compared to the trusted, if it ain't broke, don't fix it approach of the Xbox. And the same can kind of be said of the launch titles on both sides, am I right? Sony put together one heck of a well-rounded lineup to the point where only the most devoted X-bots are talking about a couple of extra teraflops at this point. Part of the problem for Microsoft might be that they reportedly sent dev kits out later than Sony, giving developers less time to optimize, or it could be the care that Sony put into making creating games easier for the PS5. Either way, it's a clear benefit to gamers who go team Sony right now, unlike the hyped up SSD. Contrary to what the marketing might have suggested, loading times have not suddenly disappeared, at least for the time being. But the good news is that they have trimmed down very significantly. When you load up something like Demon's Souls and transfer between gorgeously detailed worlds in just a couple of seconds, you are waiting, but it's a short next generation kind of waiting, and I truly believe that it will continue to improve. Speaking of Demon's Souls, the game is absolutely lovely. The amount of detail and clarity in it feels next gen in a way that no other game currently does. And that may be because it's one of two launch games that is only on the PlayStation 5, meaning that it has no legacy baggage to carry along. Now, some of the NPC faces might evoke Craig flashbacks, but overall it looks awesome and is also a rewarding if challenging play. Spider-Man Miles Morales looks, feels, and plays great. But unfortunately, when it's put next to the previous gen version, I mean, yeah, the PS5 version is sharper, and the materials and hair look more realistic, but those ray traced reflections whiz by so fast that you probably won't really appreciate them unless you slow down and smell the rays. Next up is Astro Bot. It's not as good a bundle game as Wii Sports, but like Wii Sports, it manages to be both a great technical showcase of the controller and its features and more than that, with a surprising variety of gameplay segments, each with their own unique gimmicks that make you wanna keep playing and find out what's coming next. There's no gritty realism, no life lessons, just plain fun. Remember that? Remember fun in video games? I do. In a similar cuteness overload vein, Sackboy A Big Adventure is a very competent level-based 3D platformer that you can play with up to four players on one screen. Maybe more games should start to use the extra horsepower of next gen for more couch co-op, right? Well, okay, that game is also on the PlayStation 4, but it doesn't matter. It has a delightful crafty look and the levels look so tactile, you can almost feel them. The last of the exclusive launch games, or well, exclusive to Sony platforms anyway, is Bugsnax. Bunga bunga bunga bunga. Ah! Whoa! We don't talk about Bugsnax here. In terms of multiplayer releases though, the worst thing I can say about the PlayStation 5 is that support for the DualSense controller is a little hit or miss. Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War included unique tuning for the trigger pull of every gun, which is cool, supposedly. I mean, I couldn't really tell the difference. And then Assassin's Creed Valhalla put no effort into it whatsoever. No, actually I lied. The worst thing is how many multi-platform games, including EA's entire library, are included with Microsoft's dirt cheap Xbox Game Pass for which Sony has no direct competitor. In the longer term, companies with deep pockets like Amazon, Facebook, and Google are likely going to continue to invest in game studios, which is probably going to thin Microsoft's offering here. But for the time being, Sony's $400 value diskless offering loses a lot of its sheen if you consider that four game purchases for it could have gotten you a Series X, which is a more powerful machine, and a year and a half of Game Pass. PS Now does have a growing library of downloadable games to go along with the 800 plus streamable ones, but its technology built on the PS3 cell chip is definitely starting to show its tooth lengthiness. 720p Sony, really? And it suffers from, in my opinion, too much focus on the quantity versus the quality of the included titles. Then there's Sony's other service, the PS Plus Collection. It's only got like 20 games, but they are really high quality. So it's a great booster shot for your PlayStation game collection, but it raises the question, why not just combine the two, fill in the gaps in first party previous gen titles, and then have a real Game Pass competitor, a formidable one? That would also help address another big Xbox advantage, backwards compatibility. Microsoft offers support all the way back to select games on the original Xbox, not to mention unofficial emulated support for Nintendo and Sony consoles. Meanwhile, the Sony team is stuck with no real PS1 to PS3 compatibility outside of streaming select games from PS Now. The dumbest thing about this is that they sell individual PS2 games on PSN that are clearly just running in an emulator. Like look at the PS2 logo here. You guys gotta fix this. It's especially frustrating because outside of Nintendo, nobody has as deep a back catalog as Sony does. A way to effortlessly run older games on modern displays would be a huge boon to loyal fans. In fairness though, the support for PS4 titles at least ranges from fine to really great. The most fine games like Last of Us 2, load slightly quicker and managed to maintain an absolute 30 FPS, where even a PS4 Pro would drop a frame here or there, but they otherwise play and look exactly the same. The good games are the ones that had dynamic resolution, but wouldn't hit 4K consistently, or had a performance mode that wouldn't hit 60 frames per second all the time, and are now much smoother or sharper. God of War 2018 is a perfect example of this, maintaining a steady pace on PS5, even if it's at 1080p, which looks much less sharp than the resolution mode. So that's a win, but a small one. And finally, the great ones are games like Ghost of Tsushima that got a PS5 specific update to unlock the frame rate and run closer to their 4K target. The result is spectacular, fluid, and so sharp that it actually feels more next-gen than some games that were made specifically for the PS5. I really hope more games get that kind of an update, rather than a paid remaster, like we saw so often last generation. Bundling them in a subscription service where the developer gets paid out by play time would go a long way towards making that economically viable. You know. But if I was a betting man, I'd say soon enough, you'll be able to pay $30 or more to play Last of Us 2 remastered for the PS5, which you will, like a sucker. This leads me to some of the real problems that we have with the system itself. When Microsoft announced their smart delivery system that ensured that you got the best version of a game available on your console, it honestly sounded like kind of a silly marketing term. I mean, doy, right? So we thought, until David loaded up the PlayStation Store and somehow managed to download both the PS4 version and PS5 versions of Call of Duty without realizing that almost half of the poor little SSD was full. Turns out it's a new Sony invention called dumb delivery. And while you can move and play backwards compatible titles off of an external drive, you cannot move actual PS5 games off of the console yet. And the M.2 expansion slot is not yet activated. So if your internal SSD is full, I really hope you enjoy deleting games and re-downloading them. Also, you cannot back up your saves over USB anymore. Only cloud saves are allowed and get this, they're locked behind a paywall because you need PS Plus in order to access them. That right there is some grade A horse. And even if you pay Sony's save game protection money, getting your PS4 saves to work on PS5 games can be a bit of a chore. Then there's the other system level gripes. The lack of variable refresh rate and 8K support wouldn't have been such a big deal if they hadn't been talked about before the launch or they hadn't put the logo right on the box. And then there's 1440p. I mean, I get it. There's no 1440p TVs and you would need developers to go and tune the graphics settings for another resolution target. But I mean, come on, these are very skilled developers. And this is something that I can do manually in about 30 minutes per game. And there are so many gamers out there that are rocking 1440p 120 Hertz gaming monitors in their dorm rooms that would love to be able to use the system to its fullest. Though arguably Sony's bigger concern might be the gamers with HDMI 2.1 TVs not getting the full experience. While both next gen consoles advertise being HDMI 2.1 compliant, the PS5 is currently limited to 32 gigabit per second from its HDMI port. So if you wanna use the advertised 4K 120 Hertz mode, you're stuck using 422 chroma subsampling. In a nutshell, what that means is ugly fringing on sharp lines, particularly text. Sony is reportedly working on a fix, but if the rumors of the limitation being a hardware one are true, it might not be possible for them to completely fix it. Another disappointment is weak Dolby support. No Atmos in games and no Dolby vision at all. Yeah, there's HDR 10, which is good enough for now. And sure, games using HDR 10 do look good, but they also looked good last generation. And it's pretty much accepted in the industry now that Dolby vision is the future proof choice with support for our dynamic metadata, Dolby vision's low latency format and over 68 billion colors versus HDR 10's paltry one billion and static metadata. For both of them, Sony has pulled a real Sony here and created proprietary solutions for low latency video, as well as their Tempest 3D audio engine. Now, to be fair, Tempest hasn't been given a fair shot yet. So it may end up being a competitive or even superior solution compared to Atmos, thanks to its dedicated hardware acceleration. For right now though, we just don't know. The engine currently only supports headphone use though, and the current DAC in the dual sense is just okay. There are hardware disappointments too. And I mean, other than the ugly exterior. Although preliminary reports for the new cooling system were good, now that the system is in people's hands, it looks like there are at least a couple of snafus. One major issue according to Gamers Nexus is that due to a lack of contact between the heat sink and one of the memory chips, it reaches temperatures as high as around 95 degrees under load. Now this is within spec, albeit barely, but you got to remember that it's being measured on a brand new console with no dust buildup. So only time will tell if that's gonna be a problem in the long run. These things, along with frequent hard crashes requiring us to reset the console, made the PS5 feel a little bit rushed, but there's light at the end of the tunnel. Software updates are already coming fast and frequently. We've got a fix for the unreliable rest mode bricking consoles. We've got faster boot up times than when we tested even a week ago. There is an end now to downloading both PS4 and PS5 versions of games by default, and they've even improved performance. There are still some sticking issues, like importing saves, getting stock while updating games, or just straight system lockups and crashes. But if the rate of improvement is anything to go by, by the time you can actually buy one in a store, it should be mostly sorted. Leading finally to the question, should you, assuming you can find one, give Sony your hard earned money today for a PlayStation 5? If I were you, I'd start saving now, but I'd wait just a little bit longer to pull the trigger. At 399 for the all digital and 499 for the disc version, it's a pretty incredible value. Like good luck building a competing gaming PC for that kind of money. By the way, make sure you subscribe for the upcoming video where naturally we're gonna try. It absolutely feels like a generational jump over the PS4, but my worry is more about Sony's future. The PS5 was clearly built around the old sell individual games model that seems to be on the way out. Next to Nintendo's half console, half handheld vision, and Microsoft's play whatever game you want, wherever you damn well please approach, the PS5 is like a new evolution from an ancient world. With that said, it's a gaming machine first and foremost, and it's a good one. And as it will only get better with its numerous upcoming exclusives, it makes it a more sensible companion to your PC gaming rig than an Xbox, if you're a PC player as well. So I say go for it, have fun. 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They really are very different.