Dealing With New Console FOMO

It’s a lot. Just breathe.

To say that the pre-ordering process of the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series S/X was a complete clustercuss would be an understatement. With the PlayStation 5, Wednesday night was supposed to be an exciting night where we finally learned the cost and the release date. In Sony fashion, they had waited until Microsoft put their cards on the table before striking. It was widely assumed–based on months of rumors–that the PS5 was going to cost more than the Xbox Series X and that it would release in late-November. The weekend prior, Microsoft had announced their plans for the S/X, and it seemed that for the first time in a long time, Microsoft had momentum. Sony dumped cold water on that just a few days later. By announcing that the PS5 was going to come out just two days after the new Xbox and that the digital version of the console would actually be less than the Xbox, many were already declaring that Sony had won the next-gen console wars.

Then pre-orders hit.

What a mess. For Sony, planned or not, retailers began taking pre-orders just an hour after Sony’s PS5 announcement. There was no heads-up. There was no warning. Someone at Wal-Mart got excited and jumped the gun and then every other retailer panicked and followed. Before you even knew that the PS5 was available, it was gone. Microsoft seemed to have a better rollout plan for their pre-orders, but it didn’t fare much better. It required some hardcore dedication, some luck, and keeping Wario64’s Twitter account pulled up in order to get lucky enough to spend $499.99 during a global recession. 

It has made a lot of people mad, and it’s hard to blame them. I have spoken with more than a few people that were planning on buying a new console at launch but are now questioning whether or not they will even keep trying to secure one by the end of 2020. One of them in particular went out the very next day and spent over $2,000 on a new gaming computer. 

With a little over a month until these new consoles are on the market, there are so many questions that we haven’t had answered. At this point, it’s not looking like we will get those answers, either. Just off the top of my head, here are some of the concerns that I still have…

• If teraflops are what you want in your life, Xbox Series X seems to be the most powerful hardware this go around. So if the Xbox Series X is that powerful and the Xbox Series S is the disk-driverless, scaled-down, cheaper alternative that can still play all the same games, then how can the Series S not be able to match the current Xbox One X? 
• With the PlayStation, it wasn’t too long ago that the rumors were that every single PlayStation game–from the original PlayStation to the PlayStation 4–was going to be backwards compatible on the PS5. That was likely a pipe dream; but with five weeks to go until launch, those rumors have still not been confirmed or denied. Hell, we don’t know anything about the upgrade system. Apparently, Travis Scott has a PS5 already, maybe he could help clear this up.
• Where are the games? We know that Halo Infinity was pushed back and that it’s too soon for any of Sony’s first-parties to have anything ready, but still…what are people going to play on these things? Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Watchdogs: Legion, Call of Duty Black Ops 5, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla are all planned for launch, but those are going to be on the current-gen consoles as well. Did I go through all the trouble of buying a $500 console just to play Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 in 4K?

It’s easier said than done, but my advice is to not be afraid to wait. 2020 is stressful enough as is, don’t let not getting your hands on a new console get you down even further. The Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 are great consoles, and they’ll have versions of most of those launch games.

There’s still so much that we don’t know about these consoles. If you’re the person that only buys one of them, sit back and let things play out a bit. 

Don’t let FOMO get to you.