PS5 has a key advantage over the Xbox Series X — what you need to know

(Prototype credit: Microsoft/Sony)

It's no undercover that the PS5 has a lot less storage than the Xbox Series X, and currently there are no options to expand it in any way. Fortunately, the PS5 does have i advantage: how it handles the storage for backwards compatible games.

PS5 games can only be played on the console'southward internal SSD, though PS4 games can run from an external hard bulldoze. Even if they have had PS5-centric upgrades.

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Take Ghosts of Tsushima, for instance. The game was a nail hit when information technology arrived last year, and got a PS5 upgrade later on the release of the next-gen console. Unfortunately the game is 50GB, and while not as large every bit some PS4 games (Like the 150GB Mod Warfare) that would still be a large chunk of storage to sacrifice.

Thankfully this loophole means you lot don't need to utilise upwardly any of the 667GB of free infinite your PS4 has. You only demand a regular external hard drive or SSD, and the game tin can yet exist run in its PS5-enhanced grade. And so the game would have meliorate graphics, amend frame rate, and all the other benefits of being played on a PS5, only it all the same technically classified as a PS4 game.

Unfortunately this isn't the case on Xbox Series X. Once a game is optimized for the new panel, the console classifies it as a Series X championship. In other words it has to be played on the console's internal SSD or official expansion drives. Trying to run it from whatever other external drive won't work. TechRadar points out that in that location are some exceptions, similar Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, but for the most function it's internal or cypher.

This loophole likely exists due to the different ways both consoles handle backwards compatibility. Rocket League developer Psyonix revealed that an Xbox I game tin exist upgraded to a full Xbox Series X title by applying a software update. Unfortunately, upgrading a PS4 game to a PS5 re-create requires a full port of the game. So no affair how many times yous update a PS4 game, it'll merely ever be a PS4 game.

Because how few games at that place are on adjacent-gen consoles right now, a lot of PS5 owners will be playing older games to pass the fourth dimension. And so for the time beingness it seems equally though the PS5 has an border over the Xbox Series X. Or at least it will until we start seeing more than native PS5 games go released.

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Tom is the Tom's Guide's Automotive Editor, which ways he tin ordinarily be establish human knee deep in stats the latest and best electric cars, or checking out some sort of driving gadget. It's long mode from his days as editor of Gizmodo UK, when pretty much everything was on the table. He's normally found trying to squeeze another giant Lego gear up onto the shelf, draining very large cups of java, or complaining that Ikea won't let him buy the stuff he really needs online.