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How will you choose between MS & Sony's new consoles?

Josey Wales

If Sony and Microsoft release both of their new machines later this year how will you decided which machine to get? For the sake of discussion lets just say that they will be released this year.

Will it be brand loyalty? You've bought into the MS Live eco system or PSN and don't want to switch? Will it be the hardware specs of the machine or the launch line up of games? Will it be backwards compatibility? Price?

For me right now I have no idea which I would choose. In this current generation I bought all three (Wii, PS3, 360). I don't think brand loyalty will be a factor for me. In the end I will probably end up with both so I will just have to decide which one first. One important factor will be what Naughty Dog has lined up for the PS4 (or whatever they call it).

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Burgo

ShadowHearth wrote: »

WTF... No way it will be out with all those games! Surely there is some mistake in there. A good few games in that list are not even announced properly.

It's not a launch list, just a list of games confirmed for ps4.

AlmightyCushion

Deano7788 wrote: »

A size comparison between the different consoles.

Given the PS4 has the more powerful hardware (or so I've read) it's amazing it's the smallest of the lot. The XBoner has an external power brick, does the PS4 have one too? It must do given its size. Anywho, I can't wait to see an ifixit tear down of the two to see what is causing the difference in size. Maybe Microsoft are putting in better, bigger heatsinks as a precaution to prevent another RROD fiasco.

On another note, I seen this story over on Ars. That family members thing sounds awesome and could be a big draw to the console for Microsoft. Up to 10 "family members" (hopefully you can add and remove who a family member is relatively easily) and you can all play each other's catalogues of games. Hopefully, there is the ability to browse a family member's library. If there is this makes lending games between friends easier than the PS4, although limits who you can lend to/from. This has the potential to be a big selling point to people especially parents.

The 24 hour check-in won't be a big drawback to the vast majority or people and chances are most won't even know about it until their net connection goes down for more than 24 hours. What happens when it doesn't check in? Are you able to play games still? Does it just stop you from activating new games until next check in or what?

Trade ins are still there but not as easy as it is with the 360 and PS3. Publishers can block a game from being traded in if they want but we'll have to wait and see how many choose to do that. I really don't see either the 24 hour check in or the changes to trade in policy putting many people off whereas that family member thing could actually win a lot of people over. Hell, it's piqued my interest and I wasn't even planning on getting a console.

Kinect being bundled is a bit risky. Every one having one means that developers may be more likely to use it in real games (Halo, Watchdogs, Deus Ex, Mass Effect style games not that Dance Central style shíte and party games) that add to the gameplay and not just some crap that some eejit decided to shoe horn into the game because it's there. If that does happen then it could be another advantage to the XBox. If it doesn't really take off for things other than Dance Central or useless shoe horned in crap then I guess they can always sell the XBox without it and reduce the price later on to compete price wise with the PS4.

FlyingIrishMan

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

The XBoner has an external power brick, does the PS4 have one too?

Nope. PS4 powerbrick is internal.

Pushtrak

FlyingIrishMan wrote: »

Nope. PS4 powerbrick is internal.

This should be a source of concern, not joy. Both 360 and PS3 suffered from the consoles overheating. How is the PS4 going to do being so small? Dangerous game.

Genghiz Cohen

Newer architectures run cooler.... or something...

Dyr

FlyingIrishMan wrote: »

Nope. PS4 powerbrick is internal.

in the words of karl hooper "thats amazing!"

Pushtrak

I don't know. In fairness, though, if this is the biggest thing the PS4 can do to make me worry, they're looking very good. Though it is still a worry. It isn't like they'd announce anything that could be taken in a bad light. We'll see, I guess.

Grayditch

Yeah, I don't mind a powerbrick, if it means longer life for the console.

Professey Chin

Pushtrak wrote: »

This should be a source of concern, not joy. Both 360 and PS3 suffered from the consoles overheating. How is the PS4 going to do being so small? Dangerous game.

The ps4 chassis is basically a giant vent. Almost the entire back of it and the slits you see are all ventilation

AlmightyCushion

Pushtrak wrote: »

This should be a source of concern, not joy. Both 360 and PS3 suffered from the consoles overheating. How is the PS4 going to do being so small? Dangerous game.

I'd prefer if it was internal. Properly designed it isn't a problem. I do worry that it could be too small to deal with the heat generated. I just can't see how it is more powerful than the XBox but is much smaller and has an internal power supply.

FlyingIrishMan

Pushtrak wrote: »

This should be a source of concern, not joy. Both 360 and PS3 suffered from the consoles overheating. How is the PS4 going to do being so small? Dangerous game.

Sony is a hardware company, they specialise in that sort of stuff.
The latest PS3 slim has some weird fancy aerodynamic plasticky stuff to push the heat out to the back vents. Considering the PS4 is actually smaller than the PS3 slim I'd guess this has some sort of similar system.

DjFlin

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

The 24 hour check-in won't be a big drawback to the vast majority or people and chances are most won't even know about it until their net connection goes down for more than 24 hours. What happens when it doesn't check in? Are you able to play games still? Does it just stop you from activating new games until next check in or what?

If you cant complete the online check in, you lose access to all games. Only functions like Music/Video playback will work.

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Trade ins are still there but not as easy as it is with the 360 and PS3. Publishers can block a game from being traded in if they want but we'll have to wait and see how many choose to do that. I really don't see either the 24 hour check in or the changes to trade in policy putting many people off whereas that family member thing could actually win a lot of people over. Hell, it's piqued my interest and I wasn't even planning on getting a console.

Amazon brought out a feature on Kindle a while back that let you "lend" books to your friends if publishers allowed it. Can you guess how many did?

Giving the Publishers the option to allow/disallow used games is like straight up saying "No used games"

I'd be interested to see if that family member plan allows everyone to play online too.

The PS4 only requires 1 PS+ subscription per console for everyone on it to play online.

Pushtrak

Chinpool wrote: »

The ps4 chassis is basically a giant vent. Almost the entire back of it and the slits you see are all ventilation

I guess I'm naturally paranoid in ways. The ventilation can only be as good as the fans is my thinking, and with so much stuff in there, they'd have to be small. That's my thinking, anyway, flawed as it might be.

AlmightyCushion

DjFlin wrote: »

Amazon brought out a feature on Kindle a while back that let you "lend" books to your friends if publishers allowed it. Can you guess how many did?

Giving the Publishers the option to allow/disallow used games is like straight up saying "No used games"

Not necessarily. If you lend a kindle book, the publisher doesn't make a cent from it. With trade-ins on the XBox they do make money.

DjFlin wrote: »

I'd be interested to see if that family member plan allows everyone to play online too.

The PS4 only requires 1 PS+ subscription per console for everyone on it to play online.

All I've seen is that only one person can play it at a time. I assume that person has full access to the game including online play but haven't seen anything that says it does or it doesn't. I think Gold is the same as PS+ there. 1 sub per console.

nesf

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Newer architectures run cooler.... or something...

It's a mobile CPU, i.e. one designed for working in small cramped environments without loads of cooling. The GPU looks like an underclocked version of the current AMD 7870, which would still give a lot of grunt compared to current consoles but without the cooling requirements of its full power PC card version.

AMD have a lot of experience in the mobile PC market with dealing with designing for small cases with little in the way of cooling. I think they could pull this off.

ahnowbrowncow

That's a pretty big fan and heatsink in the xboxone, did they need it that big? I'd like to see inside the ps4.

Monotype

Bigger fans usually mean less noise.

K.O.Kiki

I see a big fan, and a buttload of wasted space.

danthefan

Pre-ordered a PS4 today.

AlmightyCushion

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

I see a big fan, and a buttload of wasted space.

Yeah, it reassures me a bit. Sony were just a bit more creative with the layout hence the smaller size.

Captain Chaos

Looking at that design, MS could have made the HDD swapable like the PS3 and 4 if they really wanted to.

Burgo

It does look like a standard 2.5" Hard drive.

Wetbench4

side by side

C14N

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

why are people getting offended about being told to stick with the 360 if you dont have good access to internet?

Because it's outdated hardware, it's not a viable option at all. The 360 isn't dead yet, but it will start fading once the One comes out. There was about a year of overlap last time because after that, publishers just don't bother with the older ones anymore.

I completely understand that they wanted to push toward "all in one" entertainment since a lot of their users already use their 360s for that and they don't have to try to cater to gamers at all but it's usually a good idea to try and to be nice about it. He could have pulled out some sort of figure about how many of their current players are connected anyway instead of just saying "just keep playing that 360, so long suckers!". There's also the fact that this move is probably hurting the casuals more than the hardcores, since the hardcores tend to spend more time online doing stuff like discussing video games or reading video game websites. The reason a lot of people might be upset is because they have a lot of stuff invested in their 360s and with their Live accounts and they probably didn't want to have to switch to a competitor.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

microsoft have decided that a portion of its userbase is not worth selling to by only including hdmi out. this is apparently something awful. i'm just wondering why the lack of outrage

It's not nearly as bad is why. You can't get a display these days without HDMI (I genuinely wouldn't know where to find one if I wanted one). You could pick one up secondhand for €100 if you haven't already gotten one.

Internet connection is not something everyone can just get. Usually, people who don't have it, don't have it because it's not available and you just have to twiddle your thumbs until someone wants to come around and offer it.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

that's not true for the majority of people in the west though
you can't get good internet connection in a lot of places, that's true. you probably wont be able to play games online without buckets of lag and you certainly wont be able to download games with an inevitably restrictive download cap, but for the purposes of checking in once every 24 hours? that covers a huge amount of people.

i mean, even if you can't get broadband you can use your smartphone to create a wifi hotspot for the 5 seconds it will take to do it.

pa4

I'll probably go with the PS4 mainly to do with two things - the whole used game issue and the having to be online once every 24 hours. Nothing to do with the shape/look of the consoles or the games/exclusives available on each.

C14N

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

that's not true for the majority of people in the west though
you can't get good internet connection in a lot of places, that's true. you probably wont be able to play games online without buckets of lag and you certainly wont be able to download games with an inevitably restrictive download cap, but for the purposes of checking in once every 24 hours? that covers a huge amount of people.

i mean, even if you can't get broadband you can use your smartphone to create a wifi hotspot for the 5 seconds it will take to do it.

I know, and that's why I think he should have been prepared for this and just said something about how few of their consumers would be affected by it. Honestly, this wouldn't really put me off an Xbox One completely (although it would make me not want to rely on it), I just think that saying "buy a 360" is a silly response. It's the nature of electronic hardware that stuff has a limited amount of time to shine and it's then replaced, especially in a tightly-controlled space like with video games.

stevenmu

A lot of the Xbone's height seems to come from that big-ass fan, which should give plenty of cooling while keeping nice and quiet, so that's a good thing.

I wonder what's under that hard disk, is there enough space under there for some low profile DIMMs?

DjFlin

The 24Hr check in problem could have been solved very easily by just sticking a 3G modem in the Xbox. Amazon done it with the Kindle a few years ago.

The costs would be negligible and it would ease so many people's concerns.

EDIT: For clarity, the modem would only be used to check in, using very little data, MS would foot the (tiny) bill.

Burgo

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/194150/Further_clarification_on_Sonys_DRM_policies_No_more_online_pass.php

A further bit of news regarding DRM.

Sony wrote:

We've already come right out and said we're not going to allow online pass. And the word "allow" is key there. Specifically with online, with PS+ requiring a charge to play online, we would not want any publisher [to charge.]

In general, we're all businesses. Sony or Microsoft is never going to be able to tell EA or Activision exactly what they can do. What we like to say at PlayStation is that we set the precedent. The way we are approaching this is that we want this to be extremely consumer-friendly, extremely retailer-friendly, and extremely publisher-friendly. My personal opinion is that it's hard for me to believe that any major publisher is going to put an extra set of used DRM onto game titles because that wouldn't put them in a good spot, right?