Firstly, I would like to say that I’m not biased in shape or form.
I’ve owned both PS3 and Xbox 360. I enjoyed the benefits each system had, but for a long life cycle, the PS3 appealed to me more because I’m a BIG movie buff and Blu-ray was a great feature which the 360 did not have. Blu-ray made games look better in quality. The games on PS3 appealed to me more because the exclusives were more entertaining. Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, God of War, Little Big Planet among many other games seemed more interesting to me as a gamer.
360 has Halo and Gears of War, but I don’t buy a console system purely for a few good games. I buy it for the entertainment value for both media and games. When it really comes down to it, PC wins by a mile stone because there aren’t any limits with PC–because there’s always a solution for something you might want to do on it.
The Xbox One
“U.G.L.Y You ain’t got no alibi, You ugly Hey! Hey! You ugly.”
It looks like an old VCR player–am I wrong?
It’s ugly in my opinion, and I get the feeling that PS4 looks similar after seeing the teaser trailer. This new console generation has not impressed me so far, and the Xbox conference was boring.
What’s with the confusing name? Xbox One… in 30 years time, looking back, people will think ‘why does the console go from Xbox, Xbox 360 to Xbox One?’
The presentation was a let-down.. Sony did a much better job and they didn’t even show the console; just the controller. Sony also impressed me with all the developer support they are getting.
Xbox One Vs PS4 Specifications
It all comes down to power and potential. The specs of the PS4 are much more impressive. GDDR5, which has much faster bandwidth, plus this so called Xbox architecture might be harder to work with for developers. The GPU power gives the PS4 a lot more potential for better looking games. The CPUs seem identical in power–they are both AMD based.
Xbox One now has a custom architecture, probably due to the way Kinect interacts with the operating system and the user.
PS4 has a more simplistic PC architecture which is win for me–it means games can be ported more easily and tweaked to their full potential.
I’m a hard core gamer; Kinect doesn’t impress me. They should have technology such as voice activation built into the system. Not from an external peripheral device.
The Controllers
The PS4 controller, to me, seems more sleek, especially with its new touch pad/button and light bar to detect the player and their PSN account. I love the 360 controller, don’t get me wrong, but I use it on PC–not the Xbox. The new Xbox One controller looks good but doesn’t blow me away.
I’m still not sold on the Playstation Move. But at least it’s more accurate than a camera tracking your movement. The PC will always dominate the gaming industry and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on Leap Motion, which will make any PC monitor feel and work a bit like a touch screen.
The Games
Anything that looked impressive game-wise that they showed at the Xbox press conference will undoubtedly be on PS4, like EA Sports games and COD.
The TV integration is not impressive. HDMI input did seem cool, but would it be possible to hook that up to an already-paid-for Virgin or Sky subscription and most people that enjoy TV will watch it on Freeview. Sony has always been about the games. That is the point of a console.
Xbox Live Gold was good for its time, but it’s expensive and not worth the cost when I can play games online for free with the PS3 and PC.
I’m hoping that PS4’s Plus will outperform Live with access to free-to-play games and better online gaming. Cross-game chat is coming to PS4, which is great!
Cross-game “gaming” is coming to PS4; you can watch someone play live and even take over and play their game over the internet.
My one important gripe is backwards compatibility with PS4. I hope in time that gets fixed with emulation from the disk itself. Sony at least said that backwards capability will be possible in the future with PS4 through software emulation, which gives us hope!
Will the new Xbox be backwards compatible? Unfortunately not, as it’s been confirmed that the 360 is not backwards compatible.
What does the mean for Nintendo and the Wii U?
Sorry, Nintendo, but you’ve lost already with the Wii U… and its very poor sales and last gen technology. The controller is very gimmicky.. Its only use is to play a game whilst on the toilet. The PSP Vita works the same way with PS4, except you can take the PSVita out with you and play its own games on the system. Mario was great during my childhood, but these days? Well let’s just say I’d rather play a fast paced Sonic the Hedgehog game rather than a fat plumber that doesn’t do his actual job (but instead rescues a princess that doesn’t need rescuing). Clearly Bowzer and the princess are an item and Mario is like a jealous Italian ex-husband.
