Xbox isn’t beating the PS5 in any part of Europe, it’s just a poorly written and phrased article and headline. The percentage by which the PS5 is outselling Xbox is lower in the UK than in the other countries cited, but still more than double.

I think of it more as a concrete block! It is however, an unobtrusive concrete block that takes up as little visual and physical space as possible. As someone who’s had trouble finding a physical space for my PS5, I would be quite happy with something a bit more sober. The PS5’s size was dictated by an overestimation of how much cooling would be required on the final production silicon and how to cool it cheaply, but the design is purely a marketing decision. I suppose it ultimately doesn’t matter, since the PS5 is outselling Xbox by a ridiculous margin, and third party software sales on Xbox are less than its market share would suggest. I do appreciate the design and engineering in the Series X, though the things that allow the compact form factor like the split motherboard and vapor chamber cooler mean that it costs around 30% more to make than the PS5, which necessitated the compromised Series S.

So much kvetching in this thread and it won’t matter, people will still buy the PS5 regardless of what whiners on Reddit say. If the design aesthetics of consoles mattered, the Series X and S would have outsold the PS5 2 to 1 instead of the reverse.