PS5 vs Xbox Series X vs Google Stadia: Who will win the new gaming wars?

You will know about it when it happens because it will be accompanied by requests from your grandchildren for the inclusion of one of the two soon-to-be-launched systems on the next birthday or Christmas list.

The games industry takes no prisoners, and several former household names have had to retire wounded in previous skirmishes. In particular, the Japanese developer Sega, which helped invent the genre, has not produced consoles for a decade, although it still publishes games. And its rival Nintendo is not the force it once was.

That has left the field to Sony and Microsoft, both of whom have been previewing the next generations of their flagship systems: the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X, respectively.

These are not just games consoles but all-round entertainment centres with more power than the average home PC, especially when it comes to displaying graphics. Both will be capable of 8K definition, which is twice the resolution of most TV sets. A few 8K models are on the market, but you won’t see much change from £4,000, and with screen sizes of 75in typical, you might need to knock through a wall or two.

You don’t need an 8K set to use the new consoles, but their appearance will likely fuel the demand for them. The new models will also play 4K Blu-ray discs and include within their tall, rectangular cases a solid state hard drive that loads up to 10 times faster than conventional disks.

Gaming is not the solitary activity it once was, with vast online communities competing with each other in real time. It’s no less sedentary then before, however.

Which system you will be asked to bankroll depends on the one its recipient has used before. Both the new consoles will be backwards-compatible with previous generations of their respective games, while the coming weeks and months will determine whether any of the newer titles are to be exclusive to one.

As you might expect, the upgrade will not come cheaply. The expectation is around £450 for a basic package, with games, extra controllers and other peripherals sold separately.

Despite this, there will be many takers. Sony, whose Playstation platform is by far the more popular, has sold 107m PS4 consoles in its seven-year lifetime, and plans to turn out up to 6m PS5 units it its initial run alone.

However, the market may yet be clouded by the arrival of Google’s Stadia, a complete newcomer to the gaming arena. It’s already available and while not a direct competitor to the PS5 or Xbox Series X, it rivals them in power.

Stadia is a cloud service from which you stream games in much the same way as a film from Netflix. There is no need to download anything to a console, which means the start-up cost is a lot less. Around £120 gets you a Stadia controller, a Chromecast Ultra receiver which streams 4K HDR gameplay to your TV, and three months of Stadia Pro membership, which includes a few games. You can pay just for the ones you want thereafter.

As with much other mass media, content is king here, and the gamers in your family will demand whichever system delivers the titles they like most – so don’t sorry if you don’t understand all the details. Your grandchildren will soon put you right.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing [email protected]. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson, Editor