Console owners: XBone or PS4?

So, console owners. Do you have an XBone or a PS4? Why? What are the pros and cons of each, excepting game performance itself (which is much of a muchness as far as I'm concerned)? What about networking, streaming, USB ports, peripherals, services, all that stuff? Which does more outside the basic "playing games" functionality?

Just curious ... "XBone" parses to me as "X-Bone", which is perhaps not what the brand would prefer. I presume this is from "XBox One". Was the capitalization deliberate, as opposed to, say, "XBOne" ... which is a little awkward, typographically.

This is not an opinion either way as to the correctness. I find "XBone" mildly amusing.

Thx!

TomB

Sorry to dodge the question, but I'm voting "neither." Graphics on consoles are chronically behind PCs, the game selection is always worse, and I believe that there are no special network memberships you must buy on PC, either.

On-topic: I was looking at PS4, just because it didn't have as many problems at launch as the X Bone, and I can't stand Microsoft's controllers.

As a person who doesn't play console games at all, nor ever, I normally wouldn't have an opinion. However, last year I created the multi-player maps for the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Strategy Guide, published by Brady Games (now the company is Prima Brady Publishing). For research I played CoD:AW at Activision Video Game Studio in LA for 6 days in August, last year, while recording the video capture to my laptop. At Activision, I only had access to an XBox One machine, though the PS4s were half a room away - those weren't setup at the time for the developer version of the game, which was needed so I could run a level with nobody shooting at me, so I could spend my time studying the terrain of the level and details to get the map commission right.

While I don't really need to know how to play to make maps for their strategy guides, I considered the possibility of getting a console just to keep in practice play/recording it to be better at my craft (at least in that portion of design) - although, as stated, it isn't necessary. But I posed the question to the writers of the CoD:AW guide, who were with me at Activision, if I bought a console for my purposes, which should I buy. Unanimously answered by all the Brady Game writers (and these guys are addicts with the games in addition to writing for them) were PS4. They pointed out that for games like Bungi Destiny, there is a huge graphics speed and quality difference between the PS4 and XBoxOne versions of Destiny - in their words, the visual experience between the two are huge.

For most of the other issues brought up by Morrus, both are adequetely comparable, for the most part both PS4 and XBoxOne are the same in those respects. There seems to be a major difference in visual quality and frame rate, but only with games that use PS4's difference. Playing CoD:AW on either machine, because that games code hasn't been optimized for the PS4 visual enhancements, there is little visual difference between them, so no advantage for using PS4 with CoD.

Again, I'm no expert, but I did speak with experts on exactly this. Consider one of the strategy guide writers, the youngest one, Will Murray is like a 22 year old that has been playing video games on the competitive circuit since he was 16. Most of the other writers (4 altogether) are in their late 20's to later 30's, each with a decade or more of gaming and writing for those games. They all said, if I were to buy one console (at this time) its the PS4.

I've got no opinion on whether consoles are better than PC (though PC can't replicate the PS4 visual enhancements either), I don't play these games, at least not outside map commission work. On the first day of the visit to Activision, I did try playing CoD:AW for a couple levels for a few hours, and I didn't enjoy the experience. So technology games are definitely not my thing...

I currently own an Xbox one, the reason why I got it was due to that fact that I already own a Xbox 360,and it has the games on it that aren't available on either PC or PS4 that being the Halo series.

I'm not sure about the ps4's capabilities but there's word that the Xbox One will soon be able to cover as a DVR for tv show needs.

Whichever system more of your friends have so you can play with them.

I made the mistake of getting a Wii

now I want a PSx - I'd be happy with a PS3 even

Things I would consider when deciding between the two when I can afford such a purchase again
Exclusives - does ether system have game exclusives that I really want to play, available on one system but not the other

Friends - if I want to play online with friends are they on one system or the other

Online cost - xboxone has a subscription for online play. Ps4 does not (for most games?) so if I wanted to play online I'd factor in current subscription costs, if any.

Existing network? - if you already have ps then anything you've purchased (like a downloadable game) might still be available on the hypothetical ps4. Same with xboxone. Also, xboxone being Microsoft does have a bit more ease of transfer of stuff between it and your computer if you have a recent operating system version of windows. Of course would you even want to or not to transfer stuff between your computer and xboxone is up to your usage and needs

Anyway just random ramblings with no answers since really it comes to personal needs.. But some stuff to add to the mental process.

tomBitonti said:

Just curious ... "XBone" parses to me as "X-Bone", which is perhaps not what the brand would prefer. I presume this is from "XBox One". Was the capitalization deliberate, as opposed to, say, "XBOne" ... which is a little awkward, typographically.

This is not an opinion either way as to the correctness. I find "XBone" mildly amusing.

Thx!

TomB

Click to expand...

Xbone or XBone or XbOne was part of my evil language invention back when it was announced. I'm not the only one who had the idea, but I and others began using that in early discussions, and as you can see, a year or 2 later, it has infected.

To the OT:
I own an XbOne w/Kinect. We use it for Netflix and Amazon Prime all the time. The Cable box HDMI feed into it is also nice and it makes jumbling signal feeds much simpler.

We just ran a D&D game across country (MN to TX) seemlessly via Skype and the Kinect. Since both parties had big TVs with Kinect on top, it really was like looking across the table to the other side, 1500 miles away. Honestly, the TV-phone feature that AT&T promised us in the '60s was the whole point of Kinect on XbOne.

I am about to replace my UVerse with a $45 dollar DVR/tuner box that works well with the XbOne's remote control of media devices.

I also just added an external 5GB USB3 drive for more game storage, and that worked well. The old 360 would have restricted the use of off the shelf parts.

and of course it plays games.


My friend sold his XbOne (traitor) for a PS4 because he really really wanted Bloodborn. But he was a big fan of that games' predecessors, so I guess I can forgive him.

I got an Xbone a week ago. Networking and streaming is perfect, and combined with Kinect it's like being on Star Trek. Walk into a room, say "XBox On"; the the XBox, TV, and Sky box all switch on. Say "Xbox watch BBC News" or "Xbox open media player" or whatever; don't even have to touch a controller unless I'm playing a game!