Don't Buy A PS5 Until It Shrinks In Size And Price
Fellow gamers, you will not heed my advice, but I have advice. Do not give Sony what it wants. Do not buy a PlayStation 5. Not this year nor next. See if you have the patience to wait until at least 2022.
The PlayStation 5 goes on sale in North America today, and as you know, the thing is huge. It’s an 1990s VCR.
Demand is high. Supply is low. The supply chain is under stress due to the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. And Sony decided it was a good idea to make it worse (for consumers, not them) by setting up a lottery for the chance to be among the first to buy a PS5 in the US. Jim Sterling explained all of that perfectly.
So here is my advice, hold on to your PS4. Give it some love. Got a PS4 Pro? Why not upgrade the hard drive to a Western Digital or Samsung SSD? I got this Western Digital Blue 4TB SSD and I love it. Yes, the load times are only 1 second faster, but I now have all my games on a single, non-spinning, internal drive. The PS5 can’t do that yet. In the years ahead, I suspect you’ll be able to get a PS5 with 4TB of storage. But for now, it has just 667.2GB of internal storage. And that’s for PS5 games only. All your PS4 games should be stored on an external drive. Since I like Western Digital, why not a rugged WD “Black” external drive?
Or better yet, as I said, wait. Two years from now, around Black Friday 2022, the PS5 will cost less, be smaller, and have a lot more games. You know that.
Ask yourself, have you really played all there is to play on the PS4? Star Wars Squadrons has been released. The Outer Worlds is not to be slept on. Cyberpunk 2077 is coming. Disco Elysium is coming. The Witcher 3 is still possibly the greatest game of the generation. Red Dead Redemption 2 is too long and too complicated, but it might be the best “slow” video game ever made. Slow down. Play the games you missed.
And now that Sony has bought Crunchyroll, maybe you can catch some anime you missed, if you’re into that.
The PlayStation 4 is still the streaming hub of your home. It runs Peacock, ESPN+, Pluto, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu and so many other platforms.
Also ask yourself - just how committed are you to the PlayStation? What do you love most about it? For me, the PlayStation is not just a game console. It is a portal to Japanese culture. It is the most Japanese electronics product in my home (well, aside from my Canon MK6 Mk II camera and my Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy rice cooker).
The PlayStation 4 brought some incredible Japanese games to the West. Here’s a partial list:
Persona 5 / Persona 5: The Royal. Persona 4 might be one of the greatest video games ever made, up there with Super Mario Brothers 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. Persona 5 is not as great, but still highly satisfying for a JRPG.
All the recent Resident Evil remakes - Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil 4 (coming in 2022)
Nier: Automata. Shockingly thought-provoking and deep for a JRPG. So stylish, too. And each time you replay it, it gets better.
Valkyria Chronicles (Remastered)
Earth Defense Force 4.1 & 5. It’s stupid. It’s fun. It’s Earth Defense Force.
All the Yakuza games. They have been remastered and there is a new Yakuza game to play in 2020.
Ghost Of Tsushima. (OK not produced by a Japanese studio, but it’s a faithful samurai movie)
Pawapuro / Power Pros 2016. The most fun baseball series for the PlayStation? You’ll have to memorize the Japanese menus, but translations are available. I’m a Carp supporter, which makes it easier for me to get into something that isn’t American baseball.
Akihabra’s Strip 2. Okay, just kidding, but if you wanna get a little weird. Defeat vampires by beating the crap out of them while stripping them naked in the sun. If only the fighting was enjoyable.
Girls Und Panzer: Dream Tank Match. Wanna get more weird? Anime girls piloting WWII combat vehicles in war games. Nothing controversial. It’s not just Nazi war machines, I hear.
Upgrade your PlayStation 4 Pro. Keep it weird. And wait two years to buy a PlayStation 5. If I break my own advice, I will post an update here.