"Loading into the new web-slinging adventure from the homepage takes less than ten seconds, and once you're swinging around Manhattan, you'll only wait a couple more to fast travel anywhere around the huge open world," Paget said.
"This stark improvement ensures you're spending more time playing and less time waiting for the game to load, but it also benefits the actual streaming of the open world... One of the more impressive early showcases for this comes as you finish a mission inside an enemy hideout. Forced to make a quick escape, you aim at a vent and sling Spider-Man through it, launching him into the open world seamlessly at a high speed. It's a quick moment, but it's a technical achievement that makes me excited for the next generation of open-world games."
This may be the most crucial difference between PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S at the dawn of this new generation. We cannot simply ignore the fact that Microsoft has made a conscious choice to move away from vast leaps between consoles, and toward the kind of consistency the Game Pass ecosystem demands. But we also can't ignore that Microsoft's choice inherently reduces opportunities to exploit the excitement of the new -- which is what hardware reviewers look for when arriving at their conclusions.
It is all part of a longer term strategy on Microsoft's part, the validity of which will be proven over months and years. What Sony has proved is that, whatever the future of games ultimately looks like, nothing beats a few bells and whistles when it comes to stoking excitement in the here and now.
