Sony exclusives really do have a strong pull factor, I'm not going to lie. For PS1, it was Tekken 3 + Metal Gear Solid. For PS2, it was Metal Gear Solid 2. For PS3, it was surprisingly not Metal Gear Solid 4 for me, but Uncharted. And for PS4, it was God of War. Still waiting on that damn PS5.

I did also initially use PS3 as a Bluray player, but eventually got a standalone Bluray player for free when I got a new TV.

Well, I guess not much can be done when in 2022, people still think Xbox is the shooter console. Everyone is free to their own opinion. That just means they'll be missing out on some great games, all because of brand bias.

Malaysian is like tat one la, the mindset never change one. Other ppl outside malaysia already change but malaysian still kampung jaguh. Everything when comes to car ppl still think proton and perodua was so protected by government tat car tax for ckd car still 100%, in fact honda civic is cheaper or similar priced than thailand counterpart.

Another is amd, amd improved alot but ppl still say amd overheat LOL. Recently is intel temp and power is higher lel.

I'm getting Series S later in the evening. Japan set. Few newbie questions..
1) will there be any region lock for Japan set?
2) how to purchase game pass? via xbox website?
3) address can put Malaysia address or need oversea address?

1) All Xbox consoles have been region free since the Xbox One days (For games. Bluray / DVD movies still have region locks) .
2) You first need to have an Xbox account. You can create it from Xbox website, or from the Xbox console itself. Which country you create the account in, will also determine the currency you pay in. I created my Xbox account for the US. Once you have your Xbox account, you can subscribe to Gamepass for just USD1.
3) Malaysia is not supported / listed. You will need to use an overseas address. A fake one will be just fine

The best way to subscribe though, is to convert Xbox Live Gold to Gamepass Ultimate. First, get an Xbox Live Gold subscription plan. Then, when you subscribe to Gamepass, it will convert your Xbox Live Gold subscription to Gamepass Ultimate. Example:

You buy 3 x 12 months of Xbox Live Gold. This gives you 36 months of Xbox Live Gold subscription. Then you upgrade your Xbox Live Gold subscription to Gamepass Ultimate for just USD1. This will convert the 36 months Xbox Live Gold to 36 months Gamepass Ultimate. It's cheaper than paying USD15 per month for Gamepass Ultimate. One thing to note though, this USD1 conversion only works once. After your subscription has ended, you can still do this conversion method, but it will be USD15 instead.

You don't really need a credit card to buy Xbox Live Gold in the first place. I just buy Xbox Live Gold gift cards. Just be careful that you buy the gift card for the same region that you registered your Xbox account. In my case, because my Xbox account is for the US, I also need to guy Xbox Live Gold gift cards for the US. There are other regions too, such as Singapore, Argentina, etc.

on where to buy the gift cards, DO NOT buy from Shopee/Lazada or any online sellers that request you to give them your xbox account info, nor buying from the one that giving you new accounts

make sure what you bought comes with redeemable codes that you can redeem yourself, not the other way round

lastly, keys sold by CDkeys are one of the reliable one, and got discount most of the time
or buy from Amazon, that's the most reliable one, but rarely got discounts

If i choose to buy gift cards, which region should I choose?

1) All Xbox consoles have been region free since the Xbox One days (For games. Bluray / DVD movies still have region locks) .
2) You first need to have an Xbox account. You can create it from Xbox website, or from the Xbox console itself. Which country you create the account in, will also determine the currency you pay in. I created my Xbox account for the US. Once you have your Xbox account, you can subscribe to Gamepass for just USD1. 
3) Malaysia is not supported / listed. You will need to use an overseas address. A fake one will be just fine

The best way to subscribe though, is to convert Xbox Live Gold to Gamepass Ultimate. First, get an Xbox Live Gold subscription plan. Then, when you subscribe to Gamepass, it will convert your Xbox Live Gold subscription to Gamepass Ultimate. Example:

You buy 3 x 12 months of Xbox Live Gold. This gives you 36 months of Xbox Live Gold subscription. Then you upgrade your Xbox Live Gold subscription to Gamepass Ultimate for just USD1. This will convert the 36 months Xbox Live Gold to 36 months Gamepass Ultimate. It's cheaper than paying USD15 per month for Gamepass Ultimate. One thing to note though, this USD1 conversion only works once. After your subscription has ended, you can still do this conversion method, but it will be USD15 instead.

You don't really need a credit card to buy Xbox Live Gold in the first place. I just buy Xbox Live Gold gift cards. Just be careful that you buy the gift card for the same region that you registered your Xbox account. In my case, because my Xbox account is for the US, I also need to guy Xbox Live Gold gift cards for the US. There are other regions too, such as Singapore, Argentina, etc.

The Xbox Live Gold gift cards you meant is the Xbox Live Gold membership code such as the
Sorry, just about to buy Series X cause I cannot than with PS5 selling ecosystem. Need to make sure before I move forward. Thanks!
<a href='https://pictr.com/images/2022/10/09/EEHp56.md.png' target='_blank'>https://pictr.com/images/2022/10/09/EEHp56.md.png </a>

Well, I guess not much can be done when in 2022, people still think Xbox is the shooter console. Everyone is free to their own opinion. That just means they'll be missing out on some great games, all because of brand bias.

It's going to be moot in the next 10-15 years anyway when consoles go away, and everything is in the cloud.

I truly believe the next generation (PS6/WTF Xbox) is the final console generation... although I guess consoles will still live on in emulation machines and retro releases.

Sony's recent dabbles in the PC market and even releasing MLB 22 for the Xbox are signs that gaming platforms will go away. Everything will be unified - PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.

Oh yeah, anyone interested in buying my 1TB Series X SSD? I'm committed to buying the 2TB one, so I won't have a need for this one anymore. If the Series X could accept 2 of these, I could have just kept it around.

I agree with this.

PS3, PS4, and PS5 has proven to be successful for Sony Malaysia... and PS3 successfully staved off piracy for many many years.

And piracy is no longer an excuse for Microsoft, especially since the Xbox One NEVER had piracy.

On the other hand... in discussion with most of my gamer friends, nobody really cares about Xbox. Even when Xbox 360 piracy was rampant, practically everyone I know (including myself at the time) stuck with PS3 for some unknown reason.

Until today the Xbox still has a reputation as being a 'first person shooter[I]' machine, which is a turn off for those who don't play such games, even if such a reputation is no longer valid today.

Everyone I know is hard up for a PS5... but no one is willing to pay for a Series S or Series X console.

read an article recently about developers not too happy with MS because they require developers to make games on BOTH series S and X and cannot develop for just one of the consoles.

this lead to developer saying that games on Series X end up not fully utilised coz the games need to also work on Series S.

does it feel like that for you guys that have Series S/X?

Not really. I keep seeing these kinds of comments where the lowest common denominator is holding back games development. In actuality, games these days have different profiles for different systems. Just like PC gaming has been for the longest time, if you have a base system, the game will not be able to use higher resolutions, ray tracing, high quality post processing effects etc. Playing a game on Series X will get you better visuals and performance than a Series S, sure. But the Series X isn't being held back by the Series S.

From a developer perspective I get why it's a huge bother, since they need to worry about the Series S too. On PS5, they just need to make one version of the game, and it will work the same on disc or discless systems. On Xbox, they need to make sure the game can run on a Series S too, so they need to make a different profile for it. The Series X version might support 4K resolution and ray tracing mode, while the Series S version lacks ray tracing, and can only go up to 1440p resolution. Again, this is how PC gaming has been for the longest time, and we've been ok with it all this while.

Can you imagine for example, if PCs need to have a specific configuration for it to work? Let's say for example, a theoretical Crysis 4 REQUIRES a Ryzen 9 5900X, 64GB RAM, and a Geforce RTX 3080. No other configurations will work. Sound crazy?

thanks for the reply. i'm still exploring my options and my preference is towards XBox Series X. can even wait a bit longer since there's talks of MS officially coming to more countries and also the supposedly "hardware revision".

so, it was a bit puzzling when I read that article, so thought to check with those who already own and see what you guys think. but yeah, what you said is kinda true. there should be someway to reduce or increase game settings automatically depending on the device (S vs X), else, no point for MS  to be selling X.

here's another that I read but it does makes more sense. this is regarding PS5 vs XSX in general. article said that both are great and XSX started off better coz of higher performance (on paper) and the fact they had the storage expansion that seemed cheaper. storage now cheaper and so, XSX supposedly losing it's advantage. when we look at PS5, specifically the controller, seems that's the key. article say it's powerful and can be they key to PS dominance yet again, provided developers start to fully max the features in the controller (those resistance on trigger, rumble, etc). XBox controllers seems to be the same from start till now.