PlayStation 5 & Xbox Series X/S: News, Specs, Games, Where to Pre-Order

This generation's console war is now in full swing. The next-generation PS5 now includes an SSD for blazingly fast loading speeds, a ray-tracing GPU based off of a custom RDNA 2 architecture from AMD, a built-in 4K Blu-ray player, and backwards compatibility with thousands of titles in the PS4's game library. You can get it for $499 and the digital-only model slashes $100 off that making for a compelling offer for those who don't care to have physical copies of their games. You can find them on BestBuy right now.

On the other side of the spectrum, the Xbox Series X's price has also been announced after months of intense speculation: you'll be able to get your hands on the console for $499.99 in the US, £449.99 in the United Kingdom, and AU$749 in Australia this November 10, 2020. However, that doesn't mean you've got to wait until then to reserve your slot -- Xbox Series X pre-orders are open right now.

PlayStation 5

Sony announced the standard and the digital editions of their new PlayStation 5 console to be released later this year, on Nov. 12 to be exact.

Sony’s PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, its next-generation game console that chucks away the Blu-Ray drive, will cost $399.99, aims itself towards players with fast enough internet to download all the games they would ever want with ease. The company announced as part of its PS5 price reveal live stream event.

That’s $100 less than the standard PS5, which Sony announced would match Microsoft’s Xbox Series X at the same price of $499.99. Still, that makes the PS5 Digital Edition $100 more than the Series X's little brother, the Series S.

Both PS5 devices will ship to the U.S., Japan, and other territories on Nov. 12, with global availability a week later on Nov. 19. Sony announced after the end of the event that preorders are starting the day after at select retailers, though the company declined to specify which retailers.

Following the price reveal, Sony published a blog post detailing just a little bit more about the next-gen launch. That includes a list of confirmed launch games with their prices, some of which have jumped up to $70 for the first time. This puts Sony in the same boat as Take-Two Interactive of major game publishers who commit to raising the price of some of their next-gen titles. Some of these games include:

• Astro’s Playroom (Japan Studio) – pre-installed on the PS5
• Demon’s Souls (Bluepoint Games / Japan Studio) – $69.99
• Destruction All-Stars (Lucid Games / XDEV) – $69.99
• Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales – $49.99
• Marvel’s Spider-Man: Mile Morales Ultimate Edition – $69.99
• Sackboy A Big Adventure (Sumo Digital / XDEV) – $59.99

Sony also confirmed some of the PS5's accessories and their prices:

• DualSense controller (standalone) – $69.99
• PULSE 3D™ wireless headset, with 3D audio support and dual noise-canceling microphones – $99.99
• HD Camera – $59.99
• Media Remote – $29.99
• DualSense charging station – $29.99

Xbox Series X and S

The Xbox Series X price, as mentioned, is $499 / £449 or AU$749. Microsoft has also confirmed that its flagship console will launch alongside the cheaper and less powerful, Xbox Series S, which will cost $299 / £249 or AU$499. You can pre-order both the Xbox Series X and S from Best Buy right now.

In terms of its design, the Xbox Series X is a big departure from Microsoft's previous Xbox consoles, making it look more like a small gaming PC -- or a mini-fridge, if you follow the latest memes. Thanks to Microsoft giving us the Xbox Series X's full specs, we can say for sure that the new Xbox will be an absolute monster, beating out its Japanese competitor in almost every metric, although we've yet to see if this will make for any real-world difference.

The new Xbox is rocking an eight-core AMD Zen 2 processor running at 3.8GHz and a custom RDNA 2 AMD GPU that puts out 12 TFLOPs of processing power, as well as 16GB of GDDR6 memory. Microsoft even touted the Series X as being the smallest Xbox ever.

We strongly advise you to bookmark these pre-order links because once Sony and Microsoft release a new batch of units, you can bet they'll sell out faster than the Flash... well, nothing's faster than the Flash. But you get the point.