Well, I respect Sony's approach of trying to keep the traditional console design with abundance of cooling solution. I think they did good job with inside layout. Everything seems to have purpose to it - and that strange form is to compensate that inner workings and airflow - how the forehead of the console is curved to force the air's direction internally towards APU and PSU side, etc.
Having said so... by trying to stick to the traditional console single board layout, it made the console the largest ever, and I'm not really too sure if it was the right choice... or had they had any choice to begin with. All the reinforcement around APU, really show that they were worried about MB bending and all - as the sheer physical size of the board is pretty large.
Although very unlikely, I wonder if the rumors of Sony trying to play catch up game by OC'ing the GPU more than they planned for are true and maybe it ended up playing a role in the design of the console? (I mean, MS originally showed the design of Series X on December of last year - and we didn't even get to see PS5's design until full 6 month after - June of 2020, and Cerny's presentation was in April 2020, which by then MS already have working prototype of XSX and laid all their chips to the press, except the price.) Of course, it's just a rumor - so I could be very wrong, that Sony just wanted to keep the cards close to.
I also respect MS's approach of thinking outside of the box, which is ironically shaped like a shoebox. In this case, it looks like the console itself is designed to fit to the box, although the thermal solution was pretty much "given" when you think of such shape - aka, Apple's Mac Pro 2013... even though Mac Pro (which I've been using it for several years now) had weird triangle shaped cooling fins - and it gets pretty warm on top. Either way, by doing so, they achieved more powerful and more compact console - which I find also is quite commendable... and it only cost $499, not $3000 like Mac Pro. By dividing MB into 2 sections and reinforced by the central metal chasis - it's really unlikely that the board would warp like Xbox 360.
While XSX is marginally lighter than PS5, due to the size differences, I think XSX would feel much denser & heavier, feeling really like a brick - and PS5 may be large, it probably would feel much lighter than its look. It is certainly lighter than original Fat PS3 by more than 1lb.
But as a fan of video games, and also physical "consoles" - I am very much excited to get my hands on both of them in a few weeks.
