Sony’s PlayStation 5 went live on Thursday after Microsoft
released its own Xbox Series X on Tuesday, November 10, in an attempt to compete
for market dominance.

PlayStation, on its part, is counting on exclusives like “Spider
Man: Miles Morales” to edge over its American rival. Because of the COVID-induced
social distancing norms the world over, official releases and the gaming
community gathering at said events out of the window.

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While Xbox has released its console on a worldwide scale,
the new PS5 will be available in Australia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, North
America and South Korea starting Thursday. In all the other parts of the world,
gamers will be able to get their hands on the much-awaited console on November
19.

The sale generated from the console, however, is decisively
more important for Sony than Microsoft, with a substantial share of the
Japanese corporation’s profit and a third of its sales comes from gaming.

According to Serkan Toto, an analyst at Kantan Games, Sony expects
to sell 7.6 million PS5 consoles by the end of March, and with Japan’s video
game market being largely dominated by Nintendo as well as being more focused
on mobile, it will have to rely heavily on the US market.

“You’re
talking about a relatively small market in Japan… driving Sony to centralise
the PlayStation business in one area, and that area is the United States,”
AFP quoted him as saying.

The PS5 is priced at $500, like the Xbox Series X,
while a version without a disk reader costs $400. This is more than the $300
price tag for Microsoft’s less powerful Xbox Series S, which also has no disk
reader.