It’s going to be a while before we get our grubby little mitts on either of the latest consoles, but two of JOE’s gamers go head to head on which box they’ll be getting and why
With the console war well and truly back on after Microsoft rowed back on all their unpopular decisions, there’s a lot of reasons to grab one or the other when they eventually launch later this year. Two JOEs debate the pros and cons of both, and you can have your say in a poll at the bottom. So who do you agree with?
Adrian Collins says
The PlayStation 4 will probably end up under my TV by pure habit, I’ve been in a loyal relationship with the Sony magic box for a while now, and though I have strayed to the odd game on the Xbox, I feel more comfortable with the PlayStation.
One of the aspects that has been most interesting has been the constant talk about the social element of this console as opposed to other ones. Obviously, online gaming has come on in leaps and bounds during this console generation, it wasn’t too long ago that you had to invite your friends around to the house if you wanted a game of FIFA or Pro Evo, and that wasn’t always a great idea if the urge struck you at 3am of a Wednesday night.
The social side of the the whole thing seems to be focused on the social media element, with your PSN looking a bit like Facebook, and the ability to share snaps or videos of what you’re doing in game at the minute all from the controller, which will come in handy when we score absolute screamers in FIFA, because that’s just how we roll.
We’re also excited to see what we hope will be the death of loading times. Recently, as games got bigger and more complex, even the most causal of gamers would have noticed that we were waiting quite a while to play. In particular, FIFA became noticeable, and introduced a mini-game to keep us entertained, but long gone are the days of being able to race through six games in your Master League in Pro Evo in half an hour.
With the next-generation, it looks like we’re going to be playing mostly in the cloud, and that will cut loading times on the physical machine itself, we hope anyway. Also, the ability to move and play on the PS Vita is very exciting, although there’s not a huge amount of info on how exactly that will work, nor is there much evidence that loading times are very quick either.
We’re also looking forward to getting our hands on Watch_Dogs, a game that looks like some sort of futuristic giant version of Grand Theft Auto where you can hack into people’s phones and devices, as well as the city mainframe. It was one of the big games pushed at the reveal in February, and having had a quick chat with the developers ourselves here at JOE, we’re really excited to see what it’s going to be all about when it eventually hits our consoles.
In terms of there being a down side, we’re not sure about the tentative information we have on pricing. Both have announced their prices, but while the PS4 is cheaper, it doesn’t come with the camera, while the Xbox is bundled with Kinect, hence the extra cost. There has also been no word on how much games will cost, and if the software gets more expensive than the current prices that they’re at, it would certainly have us reconsidering whether or not we can afford to own the next generation of consoles, and we might wait to see what happens on that front before we get too excited.
Oisin Collins says
If you’ve been on this new-fangled thing called ‘the internet’ over the past week you’ll know that the majority of people on all sorts of gaming forms think that Microsoft have already lost the next-gen console wars with the Xbox One – or so they thought.
I started out as PlayStation gamer vowing to never switch alliances to Bill Gates and his big black box, but as these things often go when you’re a teenager, as soon as my mates started buying the Xbox I did too. And that was that. I’ve played Xbox ever since. The majority of my mates may have switched back to PlayStation over the years, but I like my Xbox 360 and the service that Microsoft provides, so for now, I’ll be buying an Xbox One. Here’s why:
Okay, so the PS4 will be €100 cheaper on release, but it won’t come with the new ‘PS4 Eye’, hence the cheaper price. This means some people will buy the PS4 Eye, but others won’t and the games for the Eye will probably be middle of the road at best because of this.
The Kinect, on the other hand, will come with every Xbox One whether you like it or not, meaning developers will have more incentive to make a decent game that requires the player’s actual movement instead of just some childish crap designed to keep your kids from sticking their fingers in the wall sockets. The new Kinect’s 3D scanner will also able recognise faces and voices meaning it may be able to sign you into your personal account as soon as you say ‘Xbox on’ and it will be able to recognise up to six faces at once meaning there will be some epic living room battles in the not too distant future.
The new controller will also make the Xbox One experience more enjoyable. Microsoft have designed the controller to feel more comfortable than that of the 360 and they’ve also tinkered around with the sensitivity of the joysticks and triggers. While the PS4 controller comes with a touch pad, it seems more like a gimmick for the moment and I fail to see how it’s actually going to improve gaming. As for the share button, I really couldn’t care less if you’ve scored an epic goal on FIFA or hit a headshot from half the map away. I probably won’t want to watch it.
The biggest news to come from Xbox over the last few days is the fact that they’ve done a complete 180 on their plans to implement always on DRM that requires one login every 24-hours and to stop gamers from swapping or trading in games. These were the two biggest problems that gamers had with the Xbox One at E3 and it looks like Microsoft were actually listening.
Reports today even suggest that the Xbox One has overtaken the PS4 in pre-order sales over on Amazon after Don Mattrick released a statement on the Xbox website. So it looks like people loved the Xbox, but just hated what Microsoft had done with it.
For me being a big petrol head, I’ll be looking forward to playing the Xbox exclusive Forza (check out the epic trailer here), but as for the other Xbox exclusives that will be ready for release we have Ryse: Son of Rome, Dead Rising 3, Killer Instinct and Kinect Sports Rivals to look forward to, not to mention the guys at Call of Duty seem to have sided with Microsoft, which could mean exclusive content.
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