Aditya Ghosh

Sophomore Aditya Ghosh’s introduction to the digital world started with an iPad his mother gave him in elementary school. As he began exploring the iPad’s features, he was instantly hooked on the games he found on the app store. Ghosh, craving newer and more exciting games as he grew older, his mom bought him the newly released Xbox One. He upgraded his console again in eighth grade to a PlayStation 4 with money that he earned from family. Despite both consoles being comparable in terms of hardware, Ghosh still prefers the PlayStation 4, citing advantages in quality of life features that make the more tedious parts of navigating the User Interface more manageable. Overall, Ghosh prefers the PlayStation, but there are certain features on the Xbox that Ghosh wishes were on the PlayStation as well.

“The PlayStation just does it better,” Ghosh said. “I prefer the PS4 more because it actually shows what recent games you played. The Xbox also does that, but you have to click two, three buttons just to go to all of the games you have. In general what matters to me is the impact the game makes on me — not the specs, not the graphics — the gameplay, which is why I like that Xbox has backwards compatibility, which means that people can play the older games that Xbox had on previous consoles.”

Ghosh says the minute differences in both the Xbox’s and PlayStations’ controllers can sway a player’s preference to either console. However, Ghosh feels that the newest PlayStations have been advancing much further than Xbox consoles have, not only with the games and consoles on the market but also with the controller technology. Ghosh enjoys a new level of immersion through a feature on the PS5 controller known as haptic feedback, which allows the user to feel the weight of an object in-game.

“Imagine my character picks up a crowbar — it’s gonna give you the exact measurement of the crowbar and make the controller feel heavier accordingly,” Ghosh said. “If my character picks up a cylinder block then my controller will become much heavier due to the weight difference. I found a PS5 controller to be way cooler than the Xbox One’s controller, which is much more generic.”

Skyler Yang

Sophomore Skyler Yang’s journey through console gaming started before she was even born when her parents bought one of the first consoles Xbox released — the Xbox 360. Yang remembers being drawn to the games from a young age, and has fond memories of playing simple hack-and-slash games like “Castle Crashers.” 

Although the Xbox 360 was the first console Yang played, the Nintendo Wii stands out in her memories due to its improved game capacity on the home screen. Yang says that additional features, such as the home screen music, on the Wii aren’t the only thing that make it more memorable than the Xbox 360. Although the Xbox has more traditional controllers and one-on-one games that make it easier for her to play with her brother or dad individually, the Wii’s controllers allow for more free-flowing games with multiple people. 

“With my dad, we would play ‘Castle Crashers’ on the Xbox, but we couldn’t do much else and that was it,” Yang said. “For the Wii, there were more games available for multiple people, so the whole family would play together.”

Although Yang likes the overall quality of the Nintendo Switch over the Wii, she says some of the driving games would be more fun with the stick-like feel of the Wii controllers. She says it is easier to steer with a Wii controller. Yang also thinks some games were more fun to play with the old controllers.

“I wish the game companies could bring back some of the old games, because I feel like some of the old games that I played when I was younger didn’t really get that much attention,” Yang said. “Game companies like to push the older games aside to work on newer ones. I wish that somehow more attention was brought to older games so people could try it and they could use it for newer consoles.”

Andrew Chiu

Senior and Gaming Club co-president Andrew Chiu started gaming 11 years ago — he’s been drawn to the franchises that Nintendo DS offers. Despite trying out “Halo” — a military science fiction first-person shooter game set in the 26th Century — on the Xbox 360, he loved the medieval feeling of “Fire Emblem,” a tactical role-playing game series. Chiu’s love for both Nintendo games and the portability of the consoles they offered carried over when he bought the Nintendo Switch. 

“The split controllers are really good on the switch,” Chiu said. “Having two controllers is really nice because you can switch to playing a multiplayer game, compared to other consoles where you would need a separate controller for that. Another highlight for the Switch is the motion controls — the controller can move the camera so it looks like you’re actually turning with your hands.”

Chiu prefers the Nintendo Switch’s controllers over other controllers because they are versatile. However, he knows fans of specific consoles, such as PlayStation or Xbox, will likely not change their choice in brand due to the familiarity of using the same console over time.

“An amazing game on the PS4 and PS5 is ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ — that gave us a boat with a character so it’s intended for you to use both joysticks and triggers at the same time but Nintendo doesn’t do that,” Chiu said. “The joystick on the right hand is pretty far away from where you normally put it, so it’s much more intended for one joystick and then for separate button play at a later time. For example, when you use the boat in ‘Zelda,’ you’ll need one joystick and it’s very hard to use two at the same time.”

Additionally, Chiu notes that the Nintendo Switch Pro controllers were a huge price point, which is at 70 dollars on the official Nintendo website, he and his brother had to overcome in order to enjoy the Nintendo Switch without stick-drift, in which joysticks act as though they are being tilted in a particular direction even when they are not.

“When it comes to the price of gaming, it really comes down to whether or not you’ve done your research — sometimes expensive controllers are what you are looking for,” Chiu said. “If you pay for a custom controller, then you can get everything you want. At times, buying something cheap is also very much not worth it because it’ll break in a short time. There’s very clearly a difference in the quality to price. In general it depends on how much you’re willing to give for what you want.”