Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler PS4 vs. Xbox One

Just some of the advantages I have noticed for each console.

The advantages of the PS4:

No daily (24 hour) internet check in to play games.
No DRM on exclusives. No restrictions on used games. DRM left up to publishers on 3rd party games.
Better GPU and slightly better RAM.
Controller has a mini touch pad.
$100 cheaper.

The advantages of the Xbox One:

Fully integrated voice and gesture commands. Facial recognition, can detect stuff like heart rate.
HDMI in that will allow you to connect and control your satellite/cable.
MS is really aggressive about pushing cloud processing. Launch titles like Forza 5 will implement it and Titanfall to some degree.
4k gaming later into the life cycle?
300,000 servers on day one of launch.

To me Microsoft is more ambitious about pushing "next gen" but hindering it at the same time. If you have a monthly bandwidth cap, this console is going to end up being useless.
Obviously Microsoft is alienating a lot of people with just the daily internet connection check in and other DRM nonsense.

This thread topic ought to be fun. I would say that this will potentially get as agressive as some political threads.

For me, I like my XBox 360, I am not jumping on to any new platform any time soon.

One thing to keep in mind is that several of these things can change over time. The DRM, internet check, adding 4K, new controllers, etc.

I think that people with an XBox will *tend* to stay in that camp, and people with PlayStations will *tend* to stay there too. There will obviously be some switching going on, and some people will love it while others will get burned by it not meeting their expectations.

As with anything like this, I don't like being on the cutting edge with it. Let someone else iron out "real world" usage first. I mean, if it is anything like the current platforms that came out a while ago (Nov 2005 for XBox and Nov 2006 for PS3), you have quite a long time before the console will be replaced again, so missing out on a month or two while the bleeding edge users basically test out the systems and changes/fixes come flowing won't really be missing out much in the total lifespan of the products.

Well I am an Xbox guy, I have a pre-order for both an Xbox One and PS4. I'm leaning towards changing to the PS4. Though I want to see how things will play out when more information is released in the coming months to make my final decision.

Everytime a new game machine comes out, I think about buying one, then I don't. I don't like first person shooter games. Not really much into magic games. Not sure what that leaves.

Cool thread idea. Nick's right, could make for spirited discussion.

I have enjoyed my PS3, but I admit that its primary use has been as a bluray and mp3 player. I have been hitting Gran Turismo 5 pretty heavily lately and am up to level 24 and the Extreme series of races now. I've always wondered how Forza compared, but I've never played an X-Box.

Most of my family gaming comes on the Wii with my 7 year old, who just discovered Skylanders Giants. Before that, he was into LEGO Star Wars, and I enjoyed Wii Sports.

So I'll let you early adopters sort it out for me and jump in once the dust has settled. If only I'd done the same thing for HD-DVD vs Blu-ray.

Is this like your "How to build a World Series" analysis, Bluejay1?

Sorry, that was uncalled for. They are disappointing me too.

I'm really disappointed with the XBox policy on making used and traded games difficult and that is likely a game changer for me. I'm not a big console gamer so I tend to trade games with buddies when we get bored or buy used vs. paying 70 bucks a shot.

I also disagree with the Internet (almost) always on requirement. My console is always connected anyways but it's the principal of the thing. If I'm paying 400+ for a dedicated hardware console, I expect it to be self sufficient, patches and stuff aside.

Cat,
not sure what you mean by "magic games" but there are also tons of driving/racing games, every kind of sport simulation you can think of, Rock Band & Dancing type games, arcade style games, puzzle games, fitness helpers, flight sims, space sims and more.

Of course, that doesn't mean you have to like any of those. If it's not for you, then it is not for you. I'm not sure I'm investing in this round of consoles either. Maybe if my PS3 dies someday but I have no immediate plans.

There is just nothing immensely new to excite me like last time.

Back in the day.... I enjoyed playing Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Robot shooting aliens, Island, and on the PC, the Myst series, Kings Quest, Infocom non graphic games as an example. Zelda and Final Fantasy had some magic, but not wanting a game that is only about casting magic spells. Yawn.

In terms of the Xbox One you can share your game library for free digitally with up to ten people. Though the caveat is that each of you will need to be "always online" as your only allowed 1 hour of being offline when playing each others games. The amount of internet bandwidth will be massive for those who have to monitor their monthly use. So this feature is rather limited for a lot of people.

There are a lot of compelling features about the Xbox One, but there is usually a catch involved.

But playing a FPS and things like touching your temple enables night vision on your character is awesome.

With Forza 5 they are eliminating computer AI for single player through cloud computing.

With M$ sayin things like, if you don't have always on internet don't bother buying a Xbox 1 , they are going to piss off more than a few customers. I don't see the xbox 360 or ps3 goin the way of the doodoo bird like previous versions. I don't think people will buy the 1 for the bluray player and I personally don't like their position on used games. FWIW I wont be buying either for myself though I am sure I will have to get the ps4 for my youngest son. Oh and no backwards compatibility really is BS as well. Don't really want yet another black box.

END RANT

Richard

I was waiting for the "backwards compatability" to come up.

I know that in the world of computing (where I have been working for about 25 years), every time you add backwards compatability, you:
1) Slow/limit the hardware's potential.
2) Make the software more complex and potentially buggy.
3) Have higher costs to get it all to work.

So while somewhat painful, dropping backwards compatibility has many benefits (take the reverse of the above points).

Now, from a consumer point of view, people might say "that sucks" and I won't try to argue that you should or shouldn't feel that way.

But

as someone else put it, it isn't like you are going to make a boatload of cash selling an "outdated" console. Why not just keep the current console AND get the new one (one as in new console, not saying specifically the XBox One LOL).

One thing that MS did is on the XBox One it has a HDMI **INPUT** port that you can directly connect your XBox 360 into and get a hybrid system where you can play your 360 games and One games and still only use the single HDMI connection to your TV from the One. I also heard that you can use the interface from the One to run the 360, so you shouldn't have to swap back and forth. It is kind of like adding an external device to a computer.

One thing about the internet piece. You will still need to connect up any console in order to get patches, enhancements, supplemental game/program data, etc. Nothing is truly “off-grid” anymore it seems.

I am not a fan of the quick connection nightly, but dang, our satellite provider used to make a land-line phone call nightly. Now it does it via the internet every night to get patches, report on-demand purchases, etc. This really isn’t a new idea.

I am also not sure how the internet “cloud” computing would play out (pun intended), but I can’t imagine that MS would require everyone to download content from the “host” Xbox One. They will hit a server and the server will pass down the software. The idea behind cloud computing is to pass just the amount of data that you need in order to provide you with functionality. I would hope that MS’s version of cloud computing would take that into account as well, otherwise it isn’t cloud computing, but more like file sharing. Doing actual cloud level data transfers means that someone playing, say, Forza 5 will get base data and enough bits to race the specific track/course that they are on, and that is it. They get just the cars that are racing and their own, not the full set of cars, tracks, music, etc. That would be substantially less than a full blown download. If they didn’t and they required a large download upfront, then people would rarely ever do that since it will take a lot of people an hour or so just to download data on a decent connection. That is instant death for a console and I don’t think that anyone (even Microsoft) is that stupid.

So with all of that, mainly focused on the Xbox side of things because I own an Xbox and thus that is where my focus has been on my research, I so still have problems with both systems that again, I will let someone else buy at the full retail (or above via eBay) and let things get ironed out in a year before ever even considering getting something different. Then again, I play more on my PC than I do the Xbox or Wii anyway. LOL