Twas the week before Christmas, when all through the town, every single person was shopping, even the grouse.

I love Christmas. I do not love crowds. It’s pretty hard to avoid the masses this time of year when town is packed from the end of November through Christmas Eve. It’s part of the reason I end up shopping online, as much as I would like to support high street shops. We have still managed to squeeze in a few Christmassy activities including a trip to the Christmas railway at Marsh Mills, Pennywell Farms, and the Longest Night at the Market Hall in Devonport. That, and a session playing Jurassic World Trespasser so Evie could see some dinosaurs. The most Christmas-themed activity of all.

Part of the Christmas preparation links in nicely with gaming. We bought a PS5 that is not to be played until Christmas day. If you have owned any console in the last ten years, you’ll know that they are never just “plug and play” like the past. There will be potentially hours of set up, downloading updates, copying game data, migrating from previous consoles. All this adds up to very little gaming time on the big day. The obvious solution? Open it up the week before!

One should note the “7” PEGI rating on the box. The PlayStation 5 may use violence and fear to intimidate you into playing before the directed time. You must be brave to resist this coercion…or just give in and play the damn thing!

Upon opening, there isn’t an excessive amount of packaging. The console is wrapped in a thin foam-like material and supported by cardboard. There’s a separate slim box that houses the cables, manuals, and holds the controller in place. Notably the console also comes with a vertical and horizontal stand which is missing from the PS5 slim (although Sony will gladly sell it to you for £24).

The styling wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it’s certainly unique. What jumps out is the sheer size of the thing.

As a point of comparison I have my Moto G5 phone and the PS3 slim (the only things to hand!). This thing even dwarfs the PS4 pro which looks slim in comparison. As console hardware gets more powerful, the size seems to be trending towards the computers for which the hardware was originally designed.

The ports on offer feel very PC-like, too. Two USB ports on the front (USB A and C), power buttons, and the Bluray slot, and two USB ports on the back (USB A) along with an ethernet port, HDMI, and a standard two-pin power cable. Having the integrated power supply is far preferable to a power brick in my opinion even if it adds some bulk. I was considering the PS5 slim but there wasn’t enough difference in size to justify the additional cost for me. I need more from a hardware refresh than a little weight loss.

Once it was plugged in I lost count of the number of different updates, downloads, and transfers that occured. At one point I was prompted to migrate data over from our PS4 Pro; a nice touch which means our save games are already there to make the transition easier. I have also been impressed with the backwards compatibility and the free PS5 upgrades on offer. So far, from my PS4 catalogue, I’ve dowloaded the PS5 versions of Skyrim, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2044, and Horizon: Forbidden West. Those are the ones I can remember, at least. This is the smoothest backwards compatibility transition I can remember in a new console generation. Historically console makers kind of ignored the last generation for greener pastures, but this time the gulf is much narrower between PS4 and PS5 for the better.

Browsing through my catalogue of downloaded games, all of the ones I was interested in were playable on the PS5. It means we’re not stuck playing the same two or three games available on Christmas Day. We spent the first year of Xbox 360 ownership playing the same two or three games…

With better backwards compatibility and free PS5 version downloads, you know what that means? Many more years of Skyrim to come! (a mere twelve years after release)