It may be a bit late in the game to be mapping out Christmas presents, but for those last minute shoppers out there, I wanted to discuss one of the biggest choices out there this holiday season, and every holiday season really, for as long as there are video game consoles.
This year, once again, Sony’s PS4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One are facing off, a battle more relevant than ever as Xbox 360 and PS3 are being left behind by most publishers. The Wii U remains in play as well, but with a replacement system, the NX, allegedly coming next year, that puts it in a bit of a precarious position. And besides, the pros and cons of the Wii U are pretty well known at this point, while the PS4 and Xbox One remain almost eerily similar in many ways.
Our own Erik Kain did his own holiday analysis of the consoles, and recommended PS4 over Xbox One, but I think ultimately it’s hard to make a clear-cut call as to which is “better.” It’s a matter of preferences, and I don’t think one necessarily dominates the conversation in every situation.
The relationship between these systems is complex, and evolving over time. I wrote an identical article to this one last year, and it’s interesting to note how the systems have evolved over the past year. They’re getting cheaper, their hard drives are getting bigger (if you buy the right model, anyway) and their exclusive rosters are growing. This year especially brought many major titles into play that weren’t factors last year.
Can a console win a contest like this simply because it’s already massively successful? Maybe not, but it certainly doesn’t hurt, and it’s important to consider why the PS4 has dominated the Xbox One since launch, and also what that means for the future.
I am convinced that the PS4’s huge lead (30 million consoles sold to Xbox One’s ~15 million, though Microsoft has been extra cagey with exact numbers lately) has less to do with the inherent strengths of the console, and more about the Xbox One’s botched launch. Microsoft debuted the new Xbox with a solid thud, making the conversation not about the cool new system and its must-have games, but about stupid things like always online connectivity, disc-less gameplay and Kinect integration.
On at least some of those points, Microsoft was actually ahead of the curve, though they misread the market badly at the time. Always online isn’t really as big of a deal as it once was, as so many damn games require you to be online to play them at this point anyway, it’s almost a non-issue. And what Microsoft was proposing in the first place, the ability of the console to “check in” via XBL periodically, wasn’t even that outrageous.
And while the used games market still exists and Microsoft was getting ahead of themselves to try and move toward digital downloads en masse, digital sales of games continue to climb year after year. Players are turning to the convenience of downloads rather than trips to GameStop and midnight launches. Yes, the used games economy still exists, but Microsoft did see this mostly digital future coming. Unfortunately for them, consumers just didn’t want it at the time.
The Kinect is something I can’t explain away, and might be the single biggest reason the Xbox One has lagged behind PS4. It added $100 to the base price of the console, offering only limited functionality. If Kinect is used at all today, it’s for sporadic voice commands, but it’s far from the “everything is better with Kinect” philosophy Microsoft espoused for years. They married the Xbox One to Kinect at launch, saying the console was essentially incomplete without it. Unfortunately, when you tie your product to something that is largely bad, your product becomes bad by proxy. The Kinect tainted the Xbox One I’d say for up to a year after launch.
Sony won this battle simply by not losing. They kept more or less everything the same. Connectivity, disc games, keeping peripherals optional. The PS4 also had a slight power edge over the Xbox One, which turned into the perception of a large power edge over time, especially back when every single game was being grilled as to what resolution and framerate it had on each console.
Eventually, Microsoft reversed all of these controversial plans, some before launch, some well after, but eventually it crafted a console that was more or less identical to PS4 in many ways. As they exist today, the two are very, very similar. PS4 still has that power edge, but honestly, it’s really not noticeable, and it’s not as if PS4 games have escaped any technical problems (which is usually due to the developer, not the console).
The Xbox One still has a hefty footprint as a giant brick with another giant brick as a power adapter. I personally prefer the controller, but the PS4‘s Dualshock is immortal for a reason. I’ve always preferred the PS4’s user interface, though mercifully, the Xbox One did get a redesigned UI the past few months that took away the Windows 8/Kinect-based tiles and replaced it with something at least a little bit better (honestly I still prefer the PS4 interface, which hasn’t needed to change much at all since launch).
The slugging match now turns to exclusives, again something that is relatively even after this year, and will ultimately depend on your personal tastes. More and more these days the biggest games of the year are made by third parties and released for both platforms. PS4 has Bloodborne as its GOTY contender, while Microsoft has Halo 5 as a long-awaited sequel for avid fans of the series. But besides that? Call of Duty, Madden, FIFA, Fallout, Metal Gear Solid, Just Cause, Rainbow Six, The Witcher and so, so many more are out on both consoles. By picking one console over the other, you’ll miss a great title or two, but I’d say 80% of the best games to get for either PS4 or Xbox One are shared by both.
Sony’s market power has given it a pretty commanding position in the industry now. In an age when there’s now such a thing as “console exclusive content” and “console exclusive beta access,” PS4 seems to be earning those contracts more frequently than Microsoft. With 30 million consoles sold, PS4 is domination its competition, and so publishers are likely to bend over backwards to make sure their games are on the platform, and sometimes that means providing the “best” experience to Sony (see a never-ending stream of exclusive Sony exclusive Destiny content, for example). That said, Microsoft has had the cash to secure a number of these deals for themselves.
Yes, I am talking about future exclusive games here, but not only those. Sony has a new Uncharted coming in 2016, Microsoft has a new Gears of War, and so on, and the balance will likely continue to be relatively even there. But I’m speaking more about the general health of each console, and what you’ll be getting when you plunk down hundreds for one of them.
There’s one thing to consider about the PS4’s massive success that no one is really talking about right now, that this many sales could mean a very, very long lifespan compared to its competition.
Nintendo’s Wii U has sold terribly, so Nintendo is replacing it as soon as next year, which would be just four years after the original release. Microsoft’s Xbox One is not in the same kind of dire straits, but it is significantly behind Sony, as I’ve mentioned.
So what’s Microsoft probably going to do? Release a new Xbox before Sony releases a new PlayStation. Last console generation, sales of the PS3 and 360 were very, very even, and so both systems released new units within weeks of each other in 2013. But I can’t see that happening this time around, as Microsoft is probably going to want to develop a true “PS4 killer” that leapfrogs that system (and probably Nintendo’s NX as well).
That still may be some years away, but it means that your Xbox One could end up having a shorter lifespan than the PS4, which Sony will milk for as long as it continues to sell like crazy. Buying a PS4 means that it could remain relevant for much longer, though you may end up with an outdated system if Microsoft debuts something big in a few years. There are pros and cons there as well.
Ultimately, I don’t know if I can firmly recommend one console over the other. The PS4 would seem to be the logical choice, and Sony deserves its success given that they got things right from the start, and didn’t have any major screw-ups like Microsoft.
With that said, the Xbox One of today is far, far different than the mangled version we saw at launch. The mistakes have been corrected, and Microsoft is hungry to catch up to Sony, meaning you’ll often see deeper Xbox discounts not just during the holidays, but year-round.
It’s also tough to recommend a system in this day and age just for exclusive games alone. That’s something that used to be the deciding factor by itself, but is a lot less relevant now. Truthfully, the Wii U is the obvious choice for the best line-up of exclusive games, but a complete lack of third party support means it almost can’t be a contender, unless you’re fine with giving up 90% of the biggest games of the year, every year.
But for Microsoft and Sony, the battle is relegated to a handful of titles. Bloodborne, Halo 5, Until Dawn, Sunset Overdrive, Rise of the Tomb Raider (until next year, at least), etc., which makes it hard to declare one line-up empirically “better” since these games are so different and there are so many titles they share.
The PS4 has won this console generation already, at least in terms of sales. That means it has many benefits, but the Xbox One is constantly trying to prove itself, which often results in Microsoft putting in more effort.
The choice is yours. I just wanted to tell the story, and let you decide.
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