For the second consecutive year, Sony has delivered products for Black Friday sales that many of their fans appreciate. Last year, it was the PS4 bundle which included the new Spider-Man video games for $200. It was so popular that it sold out at every retailer that distributed it. This year the product that is on many gamers shopping list is the PS5.
While the PS4 bundle was a great offer, it was relatively easy to get. Buying PS5 this year on Black Friday may require getting up earlier and driving some distances to stores that are less crowed because what Is happening so far is that the major department and gaming stores are getting large deliveries of PS5s and they are selling out very quickly. Walmart, BestBuy and GameStop have been promoting the PS5 for quite some time now, and they are probably the best stores to acquire the product on Black Friday.
Target and Amazon.com are also running out of inventory quickly, but it is still possible to purchase the console at these stores as well.
There are two different versions of the PS5, one that is completely digital and the other using Blue-ray technology. They are priced at $400 and $500 respectively.
Before making that trip to retailers, consumers need to answer a question: should I go for the traditional console version of the PS5, or will I be more inclined to use the digital version?
At this point, most gamers have done their research on the two consoles and have decided which one is better for them. However, some may still be thinking about their choice because this will be Sony’s first completely digital console, and some people are wondering if its technology will run as smoothly as the Blue-ray disc version of the console.
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all have consoles on the market where gamers can download and store games through cloud computing. However, these companies have not gone fully digital just yet-except for Sony with the digital only PS5. The only strictly digital gaming platform that is available is Google Stadia, but it is still a new product that needs to attract developers that will bring over a strong gaming library to Google’s completely digital platform.
The good news regarding the two different PS5s is that they have identical technical specifications. Everything from the graphic capabilities to audio are exactly the same between the consoles.
The PS5 Standard Edition comes with a disc drive, which means that it will be able to play most PS4 games as well. In addition the drive can be used for watching DVDs and Blue-ray video. Sony probably chose to keep the disc drive for backwards compatibility purposes, as the market for consumers that are purchasing physical DVDs and Blue-ray copies of media is decreasing due to online video streaming services. Many consumers will have a familiarity with Netflix, Disney+ and the hundreds of other video streaming apps that they are using now instead of physical media. For gamers that use video streaming services rather than disc media, buying the PS5 Digital Edition may be the best choice; the only downside is that if the consumers have physical copies of PS4 games they will not be able to play them on their PS5 Digital. However, if the consumer has a library of downloaded PS4 games those can be transferred and played on PS5 Digital.