Those of you who have seen the showdown between the PS5 and the Xbox Series X (I can almost hear you sharpening your knives) know that I have come down very mildly on the side of Microsoft's new console. While they are very similar overall, the Xbox Series X has slightly more powerful hardware, a more elegant design, and a more extensive backward-compatible game library. While a "better" console is always subjective, I can safely say that of the two, I prefer the Xbox Series X.

I got the two consoles almost a day apart and spent several days delving into each for console reviews and supplementary coverage. I spent a few days. But when he was done, he fired up the PS5 and returned to it for several hours almost every night. [The reason is that the PS5 has new exclusive games, whereas the Xbox Series X does not. I had caught up with everything in the Xbox library before the Series X was released, and the new console optimizes games beautifully, but I'd rather play something I've never played before.

To be fair, this is not the first time Tom's Guide has highlighted the lack of launch-exclusive software as a potential drawback of the Xbox Series X:

"Ultimately, there is not a single flagship game to nail to the Xbox Series X mast. None," he wrote, calling the launch lineup "scant."

I made a similar point in my video review, saying, "I can't shake the feeling that the Xbox Series X hardware was launched before the software that absolutely requires its power was available."

Compare and contrast the PS5, which comes pre-installed with the incredibly fun Astro's Playroom and features the impressive Spider-Man: Miles Morales and the system-sold Demon's Souls. as soon as you finish one game. As soon as you finish one game, you want to move on to the next one. The first two games are short, but "Demon's Souls" is not. Even if you don't take your backwards compatible PS4 games with you, there are plenty of new ones to play on PS5.

Conversely, the Xbox Series X has a list of 30 games optimized at launch, including "Gears 5," "Ori and the Will of the Wisps," and "Yakuza: Like a Dragon." Some of these games have been on the market for several months, while others are completely new. But what all of these games have in common is that they are also available on Xbox One and often on PC and PS4. The games themselves are nothing to complain about, but they don't feel like software that takes full advantage of the unique capabilities of a brand new console.

For now, I'm immersed in the PS5 launch library (and Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which I started on PS4 and am continuing on PS5). However, I have to ask myself: will exclusive games eventually come to an end? With all due respect to "Sackboy: Sackboy: The Great Adventure," "Demon's Souls" is the last PS5 exclusive I want to play from start to finish right now: until "Rift Apart," the outlook is pretty open.

This is where the Xbox Series X can really shine. While multiplatform games run equally well on PS5 and Xbox Series X, the latter has a huge advantage when it comes to game selection: it's Xbox Game Pass.

I've written about this before, but Xbox Game Pass is perhaps Microsoft's most important project of this console generation, surpassing even the Xbox Series X.

It's a game pass that allows users to play games on both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X, and it's a great way to get the most out of the console. Most of them are available on PCs, and many of them are now streaming to Android devices as well.

Even as an advocate of buying the games you want rather than renting them indefinitely, I have to admit that I have a grudging respect for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Not only are there many games I would have loved to play, but there are also games that I may not have played but ended up liking. Take, for example, "Yakuza": one of the games I received to try out during the Xbox Series X/S review period. While I thought it was interesting, I wanted to learn more about the ongoing series structure and lore; when I logged into Xbox Game Pass, I discovered that the first three games were waiting to be downloaded.

From "Gears of War" to "Fable," Xbox Game Pass is a valuable tool that allows me to catch up on a series I've never played or only dabbled in with little initial investment and no effort to find used copies of older games. It's a tool. While I'd love to see Microsoft kick off a new generation of consoles with some can't-miss exclusives, having access to multiple popular series for one flat fee is a pretty good consolation prize.

As someone who has both a PS5 and an Xbox Series X, I'm glad to be able to spend time on each system in the coming months; while the PS5 offers high-quality exclusives, the usefulness, convenience, and quality of Xbox Game Pass cannot be overstated.

However, I also understand that the only reason I have these two consoles is for work. If I had to buy one or the other, which would I buy? This is a difficult question to answer. I like the Xbox Series X, but I would have had no problem at all playing most of these games on the Xbox One; as for the PS5, I could have played "Miles Morales" on the PS4, and technically, I played "Demon's Souls" on the PS3 many years ago.

Granted, all of this may be academic. At the time of this writing, both next-generation consoles are nearly impossible to purchase, and will likely remain so until at least January. My realistic advice would be to finish the PS4 and Xbox One backlog over the next few months and hope that both systems will offer high-quality exclusive titles in 2021.

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