The tech is outstanding on both next gen consoles. Now only if AAA games would be better and not aimed for casuals. Long gone is the PC golden age of the early 2000's when nearly every month there was a new absolute banger. It's quite telling that there are a ridiculous amount of remakes now.
Of course the landscape has completely changed. Game development has become very expensive and time consuming. If you release a triple A game aimed exclusively at hardcore gamers there is a risk it will not sell as much.
Today it seems like every game has to be this massive open world game with RPG and/or FPS elements... I love the GTA series, but the popularity there has made pretty much every AAA game have to have many of those elements. It makes things way too expensive and nobody takes chances anymore.
Smash I'll give you for sure, but MK was essentially a straight port and while the rest are varying levels of good-to-great, they're lower on the totem pole in terms of what you'd expect from AAA. I mean it took forever to release Bayo and Metroid Prime 4's first and last appearance was 5 years ago now, which is just crazy for a flagship franchise (I know Dread came out which was awesome, but it felt like something smaller scale just to satiate the wait). I think the Switch has sort of blossomed into an indie haven, which is great. There needs to be a place like that in the mainstream. I just wish they had the same level of consistency as the PS 1st party studios in terms of AAA. But hey, that's not really their business model anymore and that's ok.
There's a great website called Digital Foundry that does an impeccable job at analyzing all of the technical aspects and performance of certain games on certain hardware. I usually go there to decide which version to pick and it almost always ends up on the side of the PS5 for me, with minimal resolution and FPS differences. The SSD really is a gamechanger if the developer decides to take advantage of it. But yeah, again, personal preference.
And I mean different people prefer different games obviously, but the PS5 had what you could easily argue to be the best launch lineup in their history. There were games in that lineup that you usually wouldn't expect for at least a year or two into a console's life cycle and it's only gotten better from there. I find it hard to believe anyone could be disappointed in the offerings of this gen so far. Lots of cross-gen to deal with still, but why wouldn't you want to play the best versions of those games anyway?
I'd argue that many of those games are clearly AAA sorts of games. Pokemon is probably a top 5 gaming franchise. They just are not the same demographics as PS/Xbox.
I know Digital Foundry... to me it is rather clear the little things on Xbox (VRS is significantly better, full RDNA 2.0 feature set, more raw power) have a significant impact on visuals between the two... and Xbox's implementation of variable framerate is so much better. Just look at Dead Space right now with the VRS issues PS5 has. The SSD is marginally better (both are quite fast) and for multiplats the only real difference you see is a few seconds of load time. I just don't find that to be a significant bump to the PS5 unless it is an exclusive, which doesn't really matter either way. PS5 has exclusives and that is the main draw. Most of their exclusives are 3rd person action or story driven games though. You want a good platformer or RPG, PS just doesn't have that unless they buy it from a 3rd party.
I really consider the PS5 launch lineup to be really poor. It is held up by cross-gen. Gone are the days of the Dreamcast where you get 5-10 absolute gems right at the beginning. PS5 will end up with a really good library over time, I just find this whole generation to be lacking any sort of exclusives of note so far.
The way I see the breakdown... if you are buying one, PS5 is the way to go. If you like portable gaming, Switch. If your going to own 2 or more, Xbox should be the main gaming machine. Unless you're just a PC master race person, then you go PC and Steam Deck.
