I’m still rocking my PS4 Pro and haven’t felt the need to upgrade to the PS5 yet. Plenty of good games on there and a lot of the new ones still release to PS4 too. There’s cool exclusives on PS5 but not $500 cool exclusives imo. Well, closer to $600 after purchasing the game. So I’ll continue to wait to upgrade. I’d say go for it because you can have a lot of fun on the PS4 still.

I still buy games for my PS4 and I am a very casual gamer who never plays online.

Picked up SF6 this month and it is awesome.

Any console that lets you experience games that you will enjoy is worth it. Who cares about being caught up, the PS4 has a ton of fantastic games, and $100 is a great deal.

I don’t know that looking at games as a release is necessarily a great vantage point, but they can certainly be seen as a haven for fun if you approach them with an open mind.

For me it was more of a switch from how I played vs what I played. I got into online MMOs some years ago and (like a lot of things I do in my life…) I threw myself into them for a while like a loony. I found I was investing far too much time and energy organizing events, raids, builds, spreadsheets, people, personalities, drama, ugh. It was like going to work for heaven’s sake! 😂

Eventually I got burned out and stopped completely. When COVID hit, of course going out wasn’t an option so I got back into playing more again but realized that I could still have fun without the whole hardcore approach. I became, for lack of a better description, part of the “filthy casuals” lol - something I have never for a minute regretted. My time is my own, I chase what I like, meet others in game, and just plain have fun now.

Who says you need to upgrade monitor for PS5? It supports 1080p 60 Hz perfectly fine, in fact most games run around 1080p when in Performance mode, and those that render higher res will give you free supersampling on that monitor.

PS4 and Xbox One were outdated and underpowered already on release, I wouldn’t bother with them when you can play the same games on PS5 usually with better performance and/or graphics

The backlog of the PS4 is one of the single best backlogs of any system. It will take you years to work through that backlog and the games will be cheaper too since they aren’t new releases anymore. If I were you, I would take her up on the offer and buy the PS4. The PS five will be where the new games go, but those same new games will have a large price tag.

There’s obviously a huge backlog of games. So if you’re a patient gamer then you could absolutely be happy with it for awhile. But the age of crossover games seems to be over as publishers are fully embracing PS5/SeriesX

The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be, but I think the PS4 is in better shape than the Xbox One at this point. It got KOF 15, the Xbox One didn’t.

I say enjoy what you can afford. The PS5 will be there a month, a year, a decade down the line. There’s still plenty of good software for the PS4, and the games still look magnificent, as games HAVE looked for fifteen years. Look, I grew up in the age of Atari and Nintendo. Even the super-old Xbox 360 looks like a work of science-fiction next to those.

Try not to look at it as getting a $100 of technology, but rather if you’d get $100 dollars of entertainment out of it.

Oh yeah, all the time. I’ve never finished Skyrim because it feels so overwhelming. No Man’s Sky presents a similar kind of challenge for me, though that one also pings my danger sense really hard - I have this weird fear of deep water and space. Places where I can’t see what’s on the other side and might come after me. That’s why I’ll never play Subnautica.

Just save for PS5/Xbox, I recommend PS5 cause their exclusives atm actually are quality works(with good track records.)

But like with anything else, you should just check what games you actually like and want to play, then pick the more cost efficient approach. :)

Yes, consider popping in an ssd in place of the hdd if you have a few more pennies to spare.

Go for it. If money’s a major concern, there are many PS4 demos you can’t play on PS5 and there are still only so many PS5 games that aren’t on PS4

People pay more for things like super Nintendo analogs.

Just depends if it’s something that interests you.

An Xbox Series S might be a happy middle ground. It’s current gen, like the Series X, but with a lower resolution target 1080p or 1440p generally, compared the the PS5 and Xbox Series X 4K. It’s significantly cheaper too.

PS4 and Xbox One won’t be getting any more first party games, and increasingly less and less first party ones.

Although if your friend is chucking in her games too, could be worth it if you haven’t played them.