PS4 vs Xbox One

Brian G Turner

Brian G Turner

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I know this argument has come up previously, not least when both launched.

However, now that we're two years wiser, how are both systems holding up against one another? Is there really any significant different between them now, other than a couple of game exclusives or early plays?

Not thinking of getting one yet, but it's only a matter of time. I feel out of the loops with both, though, and can't even remember if there's any difference in HD rendering, unlike the PS3 and Xbox 360...

EDIT: Oh - there's already a potential deal-breaker - the Xbox One will have backwards compatibility:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/backward-compatibility

It's only limited at present, but it's a start.

But Sony, bless their stupid little cotton socks, still won't apply it to the PS3.
 
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My understanding is that the PS4 can't have backwards compatibility for reasons that are beyond my technical knowledge [no great feat].

It's also my understanding that the 360 backwards compatibility will be limited.

In the PS4's favour is generally superior performance. If a third party game comes out for both, it's near certain it'll be better on the PS4.

Discounting timed exclusives, I think the Xbox One has more than the PS4 (Halo 5 probably being the most obvious). On the other hand, the PS4's include The Last Of Us, which is an excellent game.

It's much of a muchness, I think. Got a PS4 myself, but never saw the point of hissyfit console wars.

Oh, and the new PS4 controller is much, much nicer to hold than the old ones. Never really complained about the old design, but the new one is clearly better.
 
I've got a PS4 but then again I have owned all iterations of the Sony console so I am a PS guy.

The lack of backward compatibility is pretty galling when mid range PCs can emulate PS3 and low end phones can emulate PS1.

Playstation Now is garbage and not worth the money (because really they can't sell PS3 games as classics!)

Playstation Plus on the other hand gives you two free games every month that you get to keep as long as your subscription is active (it's like £4 a month or something similarly small). Some months are duds but November this month is Magicka 2 and Telltales TWD season 2 - a good offering.
 
The problem of not having backwards compatibility is not only annoyance, it misses an opportunity for Sony (and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft) to lock in loyalty. I still have games going back to the first PlayStation, so if next time the Xbox RandomNumber was miles better than the PS5, but the PS5 had full backwards compatibility (or even a couple of generations) that could be the tipping point.
 
Hey Thaddeus - that sort of mentality only exists in the older gamer nowadays anyway and we are a declining market share.

Why would they build in backwards compatibility when they can charge an online streaming service for the pleasure? I think this is their market model for Playstation Now - just the implementation seems terrible.

I personally agree with you but I don't think they would lose/gain enough sales either way to justify the technical changes to the systems. The architecture differences between previous gens and PS4 non trivial.
 
thaddeus6th said:
it misses an opportunity for Sony ... to lock in loyalty
Click to expand...

Absolutely. I got a PS1 when it released in the UK (a friend already had a Japanese import). Later, a PS2 then PS3. I felt a kind of loyalty to the brand. But since then, Sony killed off Studio Liverpool, lost its exclusives with Namco, and now expects me to buy the same games again to play on a different console.

There is now no reason to buy a Playstation 4 - despite being a long-time Playstation customer.

I can appreciate that backwards compatibility might be a problem, but surely there must be a solution - a dongle or something if nothing else? IF there was, I'm sure it would sell well.

If Microsoft make the Xbox One backwards compatible with Minecraft and Skyrim, we'll buy into that console.

In the meantime, we're still buying PS3 games on disc.
 
Older, and wiser, SilentRoamer.

I dislike this shift away from games as products to games as services (likewise books, with e-book subscriptions and the like).

Brian, unfortunately my tech knowledge is nowhere near good enough to try and understand the issue, let alone try and explain it. I just remember reading that the hardware architecture was so different from one console to the next it couldn't be done.

Just on Skyrim, I was watching a Fallout 4 video and they mentioned that Bethesda has actually created/ported Skyrim for the Xbox One. They used it in the early work on Fallout (presumably seeing what worked and didn't on the new console). I suspect a re-release of Skyrim's highly unlikely, but it would be technically feasible (and, as the PS4 is very similar, it'd not be hard, I guess, to make it for that).
 
thaddeus6th said:
Brian, unfortunately my tech knowledge is nowhere near good enough to try and understand the issue, let alone try and explain it. I just remember reading that the hardware architecture was so different from one console to the next it couldn't be done.
Click to expand...

Basically PS3 used some high end Cell architecture, the PS4 just doesn't have the raw power to emulate the PS3 chipsets virtually.

Its a similar reason as to why no PS2 emulator for android (stable) has been developed yet - the chipset emulation is difficult and a brute force requires some really high power. (This is the same reason PS2 emulation on PC is fine - the requisite power is there).

The hardware side of things is not really my thing but a colleague of mine who works in hardware had a good discussion about BC with me and its fairly obvious that BC isn't coming to PS4 anytime soon - except through the Playstation Now subscription.
 
Hmm. It seems I was misinformed.

Sony are working on PS2 emulation for the PS4. No idea how it would work in terms of either it having a cost or being free, or if it'll mean PS2 discs would work [that would be fantastic], but this is quite the surprise.
 
Yes that is an interesting development. If they can get PS2 games running then in theory PS1 should be easy enough.
 
Brian Turner said:
There is now no reason to buy a Playstation 4 - despite being a long-time Playstation customer.
Click to expand...
The reason to buy a PS4, I would have thought, is the same reason there is to buy any other product; because one likes it's features.

I read this thread because I was hoping to find an updated, retrospective review of which console was better but have only found yet another thread bemoaning the lack of backward compatibility.

What about from the point of view of someone who has neither PS3 or XBox360 and wants to know which to get?

(as it happens I have a PS3 with quite few games but what I'm really interested in is it's features as a media centre).
 
I'm with Fried egg, our PS3 tends to be used more for watching Netflix, Iplayer etc than playing games so I am also interested in its features as a media centre. If the PS4 is able to play PS2 games that would be annoying as I got rid of all my PS2 games as my current PS3, unlike the first one I had, couldn't play them. I got fed up with them just sitting there collecting dust.
 
I tend not to use it much, but you can watch the iPlayer, Youtube, NetFlix and other such services via the PS4.
 
There may be more options with a PS4, but can't say either way as I don't use it for that (I also have a PS3, and didn't use it for such either).
 
Fried Egg said:
I read this thread because I was hoping to find an updated, retrospective review of which console was better but have only found yet another thread bemoaning the lack of backward compatibility.
Click to expand...

I'm really happy for people to argue the comparison. :) Though my presumption is that, aside from a few game exclusives, there's little difference between them (though the PS4 may have higher resolution graphics?).

The only reason I mention backwards compatibility is because we have both a PS3 and a Xbox 360, and no spare HDMI slots in the TV. That means that something has to go - but if we have backwards compatibility with one of the systems, I can simply "upgrade" one without losing out with our games.

Browsing recent deals on both consoles, I've noticed that both the Xbox One and PS4 now come in 500Gb and 1TB versions. I'm not sure what the original release storage was like?

Any existing owners any experiences with storage, and is 500GB really that low? Or is the 1TB version for really serious gamers? I'm presuming the latter unless corrected.
 
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Originally storage was 500GB, but it was (for PS4 at least, and I'd guess Xbox One is the same) nearer to 400GB.

If a 1TB had been available, I'd've gone for that, assuming the price isn't daft. [Although I've been playing games since the days of cassettes, I wouldn't classify myself as a serious gamer].

Game install sizes can be very low (for Tropico 5, which originally came out for Xbox 360 but, weirdly, has a PS4 [but not Xbox One, I think, release] is about 2GB), but others are substantially more. 20GB seems fairly common, The Last Of Us (which I don't own for PS4) is 50GB, and (not counting 17GB of patching) The Witcher 3/Fallout seem to be around 40GB.

Obviously, you can delete/uninstall such things and then reinstall. Installation times vary (Fallout was weirdly slow, around 25 minutes, but Witcher 3 was much quicker). Of course, that's a bit of a faff.

Edited extra bit: to clarify the first sentence, I mean in reality it was nearer to 400GB due to, presumably, the operating system taking up space.
 
I just read this article: Sony PS4 vs PS3

Although it's a year old, I'm shocked at the section comparing it's media centre capabilities:
The PS3 is still a far better media machine than the PS4. Sony’s older console can play videos stored on memory sticks or external hard drives, and the PS4 still won’t.

Sony just introduced the ability to play music files from a USB stick, but you can’t store them on your PS4 or play video files just yet.

The PS3 can also wireless stream files form other devices, which is yet another media feature the PS4 doesn’t have.

The PS4 does have a increasingly strong app line-up though, so don’t sign it off entirely as a media centre. At the time of writing, the PS4 has the following apps:

Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video, BBC iPlayer, Demand 5, BBC News, BBC Sport and Now TV.

Sadly, there’s not yet Plex or DLNA support for PS4.
Click to expand...
This alone kills any thoughts of upgrading for me. If my PS3 died tomorrow, I'd just replace it with another PS3.
 
The lack of USB support is bizarre, and somewhat disappointing. I'd often use a photo or two of my own (such as a larger version of the top picture of a valley from my blog) as my wallpaper, but you cannot do that with the PS4.

That said, my primary concern is gaming, so it's an annoyance rather than a deal-breaker for me.
 
I was going to get a new laptop, a lower price game capable machine that would still be my writing machine. After a little searching I found an msi i5 processor, 8gb ram, and an nvidia 940 graphics card. Good machine for 480 quid. Then I saw the xbox one is as cheap as 230 at the moment.

So, after xmas, xbox one it'll be. The desktop will be sold to pay for it. My notebook will remain as my writing machine.

Elite: Dangerous looks promising :)
 
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