Ever since Spotify Wrapped became a thing, it seems like every app and platform decided to launch some sort of year in review function. Soundcloud loves to remind me of all the weird house remixes I’ve hyperfixated on during the course of the year. My podcast app dragged me with a top five list consisting of two sleep aids and three daily NPR podcasts, making me look like some kind of insomniac soyboy. Even Strava has a year in review wrap up, which I’m sure won’t make me feel bad about my deskbound life at all.
Likewise, PlayStation and Xbox have year in reviews too. Like many people in this line of work, I have a PS5, an Xbox Series X, a Nintendo Switch, and a PC, so I can cover all my bases with new releases. I bought my Xbox Series X first, because I wanted it to basically act as a Game Pass machine, which it did – until I got sick of Game Pass and began to default to my PS5, which I got last December. It wasn’t until I saw both wrap ups side by side that I realised exactly how much dust my Xbox had been collecting.
Let’s Compare The Stats
Quite frankly, my numbers on both consoles aren’t shabby. The difference is in how those hours were spread. I played 188 hours on Xbox, which is about 100 hours less than I did on PS5. On PS5, I played 24 games – 40 hours of that was spent on Helldivers 2, a PlayStation exclusive, 70 hours was on Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (figures, it’s my Game of the Year), and the rest was split between Sand Land, a mediocre game that I reviewed, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and Star Wars Outlaws.
On my Xbox, I played just 12 games. The majority of the time I spent on my Xbox this year was in January and February, when I dedicated 105 hours to Baldur’s Gate 3. I got my hands on BG3 before I got my PS5, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have used my Xbox at all. 40 of the remaining hours were on Dragon Age: Origins, when I was forced to give up on a PC playthrough. Most of the rest of that time was when I recently forced a friend to play Alan Wake 2 while I watched, because I was too scared to play it myself but wanted to see how it ended.
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Why Is This Happening?
Here’s the rub: I know that when I have the option to choose between two consoles to play a game on, I lean towards my PS5. That’s not because I don’t like my Xbox – after all, it was my primary console for nearly a year. In fact, I’d say that its quick resume capability actually gives it a leg up on Sony’s console, just because picking games up where I left off is so easy.
But when I really think about it, it comes down to one simple thing – the controller. The DualSense simply feels more ergonomic to me, and I like its haptics, but most importantly, Xbox controllers use replaceable batteries.
When the Xbox was my primary console, I was running through packs of the damn things. It’s bad for the environment, so I swapped to rechargeable batteries, but that added an extra step – I always had to have batteries charged and ready to swap out, and the charger took an extra slot on my extension cord. You can see where I’m going with this.
The DualSense, in contrast, is far easier to charge. You just plug it into a USB-C cord that you can then plug into your console. That’s really all it comes down to. I could, technically, buy a rechargeable battery pack for my Xbox controller, but that would run me 40 Singapore dollars for each pack. Adding it all up, an Xbox controller with the same charging capability as a PS5 controller would cost me more than 15 Singapore dollars more, and an added inconvenience for my trouble. I could get a cheaper wired controller, but that kind of defeats the purpose.
It really can be that simple. When it comes to two consoles that are so evenly matched in hardware capability and overall functionality, even the smallest of things can create enough friction that I choose to use one over the other for the majority of the time. I’ll eventually boot my Xbox back up to play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, but I already know the small effort of having to dig out my rechargeable batteries will send me running right back to my PS5 when I’m done.
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