Whew, 2020 was a tough year, with the coronavirus pandemic, political unrest, economic turmoil, and the delayed release of the iPhone 12 That said, the arrival of the PS5 and Xbox Series X and the dawn of a new generation of gaming was supposed to provide a much-needed boost to the year However, there is a small problem

As much as I enjoy reviewing the Xbox Series X, and as much as my colleagues have praised the Xbox Series S and PS5, I believe that these three consoles came about a year too soon

The obvious difficulty here is that neither console has enough platform-exclusive software And all the big games debuting on the PS5 and Xbox Series X will also appear on the PS4 and Xbox One

Therefore, if the new "Halo Infinite" and "God of War" games had waited a little longer until the Xbox Series X and PS5 were ready to take their respective lead, the launches of both consoles would have had more momentum Nevertheless, judging by how quickly all consoles sold out of pre-orders, it seems unlikely that the lack of launch games will dampen enthusiasm for the new consoles

And I will admit that there is something very appealing about having more power to give the current generation of games more performance and visual oomph The Xbox Series X's auto HDR feature is particularly impressive However, I don't think it's enough to inject the "I have to have one" excitement about the new consoles that the previous generation consoles undoubtedly had [PS4 Pro and Xbox One X have started to enable 4K console gaming

with checkerboard rendering and native 4K (especially One X) However, it is not necessarily a revolutionary leap if you are switching from the PS4 Pro or One X The One X has more teraflops of graphics power than the Xbox Series S The One X has 6 teraflops compared to the Xbox Series S's 4 teraflops!

The One X has a higher graphics power than the Xbox Series S

With this in mind, developers feel that the performance of the Xbox One X will still increase as the console tends to maximize its performance as it nears the end of its life [For example, "Red Dead Redemption 2" runs consistently at 4K and 30 frames per second on the One X and looks great Of course, 60fps would be even better But I don't think $499 would be better

And if the One X can do this with such a big game, imagine what it could do with Xbox-exclusive software carefully tuned to harness the power of the One X The longevity of the Xbox 360 is what mature console hardware can do showed with Halo 4, and the same goes for the PS3 and The Last of Us, which came out in 2013 and looked fantastic

Not only do I think Sony and Microsoft could have squeezed more out of their current consoles before launching the PS5 and Series X, but I also think they should have

As the world becomes more savvy to the threat of climate change, it would certainly be greener to make the most of the machines before they are finally disposed of in the great console warehouse in the sky After all, we are talking about gaming consoles that make money on game and software subscriptions, not on hardware sales that drive the incessant cycle of updates and iterations of smartphones

Don't get me wrong, I find the release of new game consoles and hardware in general to really tickle my "want" gland However, the sensible part of my gray matter of technology addiction tends to encourage me to wait and really examine the benefits of getting shiny new hardware

Of course, I am fortunate enough to have an Xbox Series X to test But if you are on the fence about whether to buy a PS5 or a PS5, I suggest you wait a bit There will be a lot of cross-platform games coming out in the next year or so They may not look as good on older hardware, but the game graphics are so much better these days that I don't think you'll lose much

As for Sony and Microsoft, I hope they spend more time building the feature set of their next consoles as I want them to deliver true next-gen games in the next 12 months, Halo Infinite better look good and God of War 2 needs to blow my puny mind