Every day that ticks by brings us a day closer to a brand-spanking new console generation, with the competition between Sony and Microsoft looking fiercer than ever.

We now know a lot about both companies offerings so there’s little left to do but make a choice – is a PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S or of course, neither, the right thing to blow your hard earned furlough cash on this Christmas?

We’ve already given you 5 reasons to buy a PlayStation 5 in our previous article in this series, and we’ll be giving the same treatment to sticking with a gaming PC in the coming week, but for now, let’s look at the 5 best reasons to choose a new Xbox console in the coming launch period.

1) Game Pass

Is there a better reason than this? Sure, PS5 may have a few mostly minor exclusives for its launch, but the Xbox has what is undoubtedly the greatest value gamers service in the industry – Xbox Game Pass.

Not only does the service give you unfettered access to over 100 Xbox titles going back to the original machine that debuted almost 20 years ago, but it has an impressive array of AAA titles from the recent past as well – including a 2020 GOTY contender in DOOM Eternal.

Combine that with the guarantee of being able to play any new game from Xbox’ first party studios on day one at no extra cost, as well as being able to access the library on your PC (with some of its own unique titles) and on the go via xCloud for your mobile phone, and you’ve got a seriously awesome, ever-improving catalogue of titles at your disposal. All costing about a tenner a month. SOLD.

2) The most powerful console

The original Xbox One was distinctly underpowered compared with PlayStation 4, one of its many problems, and one that led to the system struggling to hit 1080p resolution in the most demanding games. Since the arrival of Phil Spencer and the rejuvenation of the Xbox brand however, Microsoft seem determined to ensure an Xbox never comes up short on power again.

Starting with Xbox One X besting the PS4 Pro, team green are continuing the trend with the new generation of consoles – maintaining an approx. 15-20% power advantage over their Sony rivals in the form of the Series X, a 12 teraflop beast.

Despite both systems architecture being provided by AMD, Microsoft have clearly invested more in eking out the best performance from their custom design. The Series X GPU has more compute units than the PS5 and has a much greater memory bandwidth. The CPU has a higher frequency and unlike Sony’s machine, maintains that speed at all times, regardless of load.

What does this mean for games performance? Greater power means more headroom for developers when targeting frame rates and particularly 4K resolution. Next-gen graphics features such as ray-tracing and variable rate shading may also be more prevalent on team green’s machines.

In fact, it is rumoured that the PS5 doesn’t use a complete version of AMDs latest RDNA 2 architecture feature set, which may cause the Sony console to lag behind in certain cutting edge features in the years to come.

Want the most future-proof games console? Xbox Series X is it, hands down.

3) The Xbox controller

We may have praised the PS5s DualSense controller for it’s innovation, but there’s simply no contest as to which brand has the better overall design for day-to-day comfort and effective use, and that’s the Xbox.

It may only be a minor upgrade from the Xbox One controller – with the addition of a share button and improved 8-way D-pad the only significant changes – but when you have the best, why change much?

Today’s design inherits its best features from the Xbox 360 controller, still arguably the best controller of all time, and still popular to this day. A comfortable ergonomic shape that sits snuggly in pretty much anyone’s hands, as well as its superior asymmetric thumb stick layout, are its party pieces.

Even better, it still ships with AA batteries (a rechargeable battery being the optional extra). This may not seem a great thing, but years from now that DualSense controllers in-built battery will have degraded significantly. There’s no such issue for an Xbox controller.

For those long gaming sessions there simply isn’t a more comfortable experience.

4) A whopping 23 exclusive studios and counting

Just a few years back Microsoft owned little more than half a dozen game studios, the biggest of which seemed to only ever produce yet more sequels to Forza, Gears of War and Halo. Fast-forward to 2020 and things couldn’t be more different. With the recent bombshell acquisition of Bethesda Softworks and it’s related ancillary studios, Xbox consoles now have a whopping 23 studios making games for them.

Given how recent many of the studio acquisitions have been, it will take a while for the projects they’re working on to appear as finished products. There’s also no knowing how good the games will be when they do appear. But given that 23 separate studios now work for Microsoft, it’s only a matter of time before Xbox systems start to get a lot of big exclusive games, some of which are bound to be must-haves.

Combine that with the enormously successful brands that Bethesda bring to the table – including The Elder Scrolls, DOOM and Fallout to name a few mega franchises, which may or not remain exclusive to Xbox, but will almost certainly be available first and best on the Series X|S – all told should make Sony pretty nervous once we get into the business end of this generation.

One thing is for sure, the disparity between the competitors when it comes to high-quality first-party output will soon vanish completely.

5) The cheapest way to get into next-gen

So much of the Xbox hype has been around their new flagship machine, the Series X. But let’s not forget about their new value system, the Series S.

It may only be a 1440p machine, with just a quarter of the GPU power of Series X, but what matters most is not resolution, but the quality of the technologies that power it. It uses the exact same cutting edge architecture as its more powerful cousin, meaning it can also output effects like ray tracing and variable rate shaders, as well as supporting 120hz refresh rate. It also benefits from the same type of lightning fast SSD, so the quality of life experience should be the same no matter which Xbox you choose.

If early testing is any indication, games on Series S are running very well, making it the perfect machine for that smaller bedroom TV or high refresh gaming monitor on your desk that doesn’t support 4K.

And at just £250, it’s by far the cheapest way to get into the next generation.

So that’s it for our reasons to buy an Xbox Series console at launch but you know what, tell us what you think are the best reasons to buy (or not to buy) a new Xbox in the comments below.