If you’ve just upgraded to a Sony PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, or Xbox Series S, you might be wondering whether your existing console is just going to sit in a corner gathering dust. Are you really going to go back to it all that much? If the answer is probably no, then you’ve got a few different options when it comes to what to do with it.
One option is of course to simply carry on gaming: You may have built up a huge collection of titles, and new releases are still going to appear for the last generation of machines for a while yet. If you don’t want to move your games over to your new console, then you can still get hours and hours of fun out of the old one yet.
If you decide that you’re going to do most or all of your gaming on your new console in the future, then there are really two main options for your old PS4 or Xbox One: Either repurpose it using the other apps available for the hardware, or say goodbye to it by putting it up for sale, donating it to a worthy cause, or recycling it.
Should you have any more ideas for how you’re going to make use of your old console, we’d love to hear them—leave them in the comments below.
Turn It Into a Media Center
If you’re not going to carry on gaming with your old PS4 or Xbox One, but you still want to hang on to it, the obvious alternative use is as a media center: Both the Sony and the Microsoft consoles support a bunch of video and music apps that you can carry on using while keeping the gaming machine hooked up to a TV or monitor.
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Some of the movie and TV show apps you can install on either of these consoles include Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Disney Plus, and HBO Max. Even Apple TV has now made its way to the PS4 and the Xbox One, so you can queue up all the digital media you’ve bought from Apple and the Apple TV Plus streaming service. On the music side, there’s Spotify and Pandora on both consoles and SoundCloud on the Xbox One.
Plex is another option, the versatile app that lets you stream movies, TV shows, and music stored in digital form from a computer on your local network right to your PS4 or Xbox One. If you’ve got a ton of digital content trapped on a Windows or macOS machine somewhere in the house, you can use Plex to stream it to your old games console with the minimum of fuss.
All of these apps are simple and quick to install, and can be accessed from the respective app stores on the PlayStation 4 or the Xbox One—subscription prices will vary from app to app, but once you’re signed in and set up, you can start watching pretty much straight away.
Don’t forget the ability of the PS4 and the Xbox One to play discs either—you can spin up Blu-rays, DVDs, and even CDs using the consoles, depending on the machine. The PS4 can play Blu-rays and DVDs, but not CDs; the Xbox One consoles (with the obvious exception of the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition) are able to play Blu-rays, DVDs, and CDs. Just slot in the disc to get started.
There’s an extra option if you’ve got an Xbox One and a Windows computer…
Read More News: All the Ways You Can Make Use of Your Old PS4 or Xbox One
