Why Blair students shouldn’t buy the PS5 at its release

Those who play video games are surely aware that Sony is releasing its PlayStation 5 (PS5) November 12. Seeing as it will likely take many Blazers until its release to save up for the console, now is an excellent time to determine whether it will be worth buying. When the PS5 is initially released and its price is the highest, it is not a worthwhile purchase.

As of Sep. 16, Sony has confirmed the price of the PS5 to be $399 for the digital edition and $499 for a PS5 with a disc drive (since the $499 model offers the possibility of playing owned PS4 discs and watching movies on discs, it’s the better purchase of the two). For reference, the PlayStation 4 (PS4) was $400 at the time of its release, and can currently be purchased for under $300.

The hardware on the PS5 is impressive: a leading reason for the price increase. The PS5 boasts a custom-made CPU, SSD, GPU and integrated I/O. The PS5 will have incredibly fast load times and offer 8K output.

But the increase of graphical quality is not a good enough reason to purchase the system yet, since the PS4’s graphics are also impressive. Graphics are always improving, so such an improvement is no longer special. It’s just par for the course. With good visuals existing currently on the PS4, it’s hard to justify a new $500 system.

PS5

Photo: While the hardware is good, the $500 price tag is a tough pill to swallow for Blazers (Courtesy of Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC).

While the hardware is good, the $500 price tag is a tough pill to swallow for Blazers (Courtesy of Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC).

Additionally, while extremely fast load times are appealing, they aren’t enough to diminish the size of the PS5’s price tag. While load times on the PS4 can be slightly annoying, they are by no means excessively long, nor bothersome enough to be worth $500 to decrease.

However, if the games on the PS5 were exceptional, then discussion of graphics matters a lot less, as game selection is typically the best reason to buy a system. But the PS5 doesn’t have enough appealing exclusives to warrant its purchase at its release.

The console has some intriguing titles, however, “Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales,” the follow-up to 2018’s “Marvel’s Spider-Man” is by far the most compelling reason Sony has provided to purchase the PS5. Considering “Marvel’s Spider-Man” was a smash hit and incredible game, it makes sense that this could be just as good, if not better. However, unfortunately for the PS5, “Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales” is also available for the PS4, meaning that PS4 owners could save themselves $500 and buy the game for their current system and upgrade the game to the PS5 for free.

PS4 owners should also consider that while the PS5 launches this November, it’s likely that there will be several years before the PS4 becomes irrelevant. While Sony launched the PS4 in 2013 in the US, it wasn’t until 2017 that production of PlayStation 3 systems ceased. The PS4 isn’t going anywhere soon, and as long as new games continue to be released on the PS4, buying an entirely new system seems excessive.

As of right now, the PS5 is not a worthwhile purchase at release for current PS4 owners. It seems like a better idea to wait for the price to drop a bit, then purchase the model with a disc drive when it reaches around $400.