Gabe Newell, the co-founder andpresident of Valve, has taken an official stance on the console wars between the PS5 and the Xbox Series X. The living meme recently appeared on The Project, and when asked what he would choose between the two consoles, he answered the Xbox Series X without showing a hint of hesitation.
As the head ofValve, Newell also owns Steam, and as such makes a remark that he doesn’t really have much interest in the two consoles in general. Valve focuses mainly on PC titles nowadays, although the company does occasionally partner with Microsoft and Xbox.
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When asked why he would choose the Xbox Series X over the PS5, Newell gave a succinct “because it’s better” in response. This isn’t a very detailed answer, but in the most basic sense it is true; theXbox Series X is more powerful than the PS5. Of course, most gamers know that isn’t the only deciding factor.
Though the PS5 is lacking in terms of raw power, it has a lot of other things going for it, including acustom SSD which is much faster than that of the Xbox Series Xand a ton of really great PlayStation exclusives. None of this places the PS5 above the Xbox Series X objectively, though, and it is ultimately up to each player to decide which console they prefer. Newell may claim that he doesn’t “have a stake in that race,” but the speed with which he was able to answer the question indicates that he’s thought about it before.
This question ends up being completely hypothetical, though, as if Newell really wanted to he could easily pick both consoles. This way there would be no exclusive out of his reach, but it is still nice to get some insight from an industry leader like this. It is worth noting that Valve has always been more closely aligned with Xbox than PlayStation, with many of its games likeLeft 4 DeadandHalf-Lifebeing only available on PC or Xbox. Likewise, Steam has recently partnered with Xbox to promote both itself and the Microsoft Store.
What makes this moment so special is that it’s rare for someone as high profile as Newell to take a stance out in the open like this. Previous instances such as theCrytek employee claiming PS5 is better than Xbox Series Xresulted in the interview being taken down, so it is clear that most companies prefer to remain neutral.
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