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

They are trying to make them look more like squared off home theater equipment, so neither is too "sexy" in my opinion.

So looking back at the first post, the list should be:

The advantages of the PS4:

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.

I'd like to see what the new version of the Kinect will do, but like mentioned above, it seems that you would be paying a $100 premium but that also gets you the Kinect. Offer a Kinect-free option (as in no Kinect) for $100 less and match the PS4 price. That is what I would do, but I don't work for MS, let alone in their marketing department and can't set pricing models.

I say keep the Kinect standard, as it's the only feature I find compelling enough to make me buy sooner rather than later.

I agree the Kinect is pretty sweet especially for multi-tasking. It is the device that will set itself apart from the PS4. It will allow seamless control and integration of your media library, television and games through voice and gesture. Turn on the console, pause, resume movies, switch, and close apps/games. If you still want to use a controller you can too. The Kinect 2.0 can even detect changes in blood flow. Playing a FPS with a standard controller and having the Kinect there only acting as an accent to the experience like having to touch your temple to enable night vision...that is next generation gaming right there.

I have no problem with the Kinect being mandatory. It actually helps push innovation with the console knowing the entire user base has its functionality.

I've been an Xbox 360 owner for a long time, but will be switching to a PS4 at some point--maybe when Destiny comes out. If the Xbox One forces you to utilize the Kinect, then it's not for me. I game in my home theatre. My equipment is located on a cabinet at the back of the room. I don't believe the Kinect cable will reach the projection screen 20 feet away and the room will probably be too dark for it to work anyway. So long as Mass Effect 4 comes out for the PS4, then I have no reason to remain loyal to Microsoft.

I was concerned about cable length, too, but it seems like it's not an issue with active USB extenders. If it can't deal with darkness, though, that is a problem. I wasn't even thinking of that aspect.

I'm pretty sure the Kinect has an IR light built in. So it provides it's own light for outline tracking (I'm guessing it can also read the heart rate info in the IR range). Only the color over-lay needs light in the room.

Still, I've grown to hate motion gaming, and won't be bothering with it any more.

I'll admit I never did much with the current Kinect. What part of the experience do you dislike that hasn't been addressed in the new hardware?

The only thing motion gaming is good for is dancing. There it has a real 1:1 mapping with the actual activity it's trying to mimic. There is no other action that we humans perform where the point is to move our hands and touch nothing. Every movement we make is to either touch or avoid another object. Trying to simulate any action where we'd touch something, by instead having us touch air is counter to any sort of immersion.

Isn't the new Kinect supposed to be always on, watching and listening for commands? If so, who wants to bet that within a week of the Xbox One being on the market that someone will have hacked it and posted video of unsuspecting owners on Youtube.

I don't need or want anything in my console besides the ability to play a few decent games a year. I see what Microsoft is trying to do with their new machine if you want an do-all box, but having to ungulate around the room just to start playing a game is not something I want to be forced to do. Perhaps the new Kinect will be given a voice once it can be connected to everything in my home? We can call it Hal-360. What can possibly go wrong?

I have to believe that if it's too annoying of a use of the Kinect, developers will stop doing it. I also believe that if it's there, they'll find a way to use it that isn't annoying. I'm not sure shooting it down before anyone has a chance to refine how it's used is the way to go when I see no other reason to use the One over my PC.