Last week saw the global release of the Xbox One. This week,
the UK gets the PS4, two weeks after the US release.
"How is it possible for two competing products to be so
similar and yet so different?" asks James Rivington, noting the striking
similarities between their processors and architecture. "They're like
identical twins with nothing in common."
While the Xbox One and PS4 may be siblings under the skin,
they're very different devices - and our in-depth reviews have explored aspect
of their next-generation appeal. First, we investigated the PS4, a "great
machine" where gaming is "fantastic" and the performance is
"really impressive."
Then, we looked at the Xbox One. It "has the stronger
launch lineup", Kinect is "surprisingly good" and it isn't the
"Jack of all trades, master of none" that many observers feared. It's
not perfect, but "the most important things are there: good games, a solid
interface and reliable servers for hours and hours of online gaming."
Teething problems
That doesn't mean your gaming experiences will be
fault-free, however. British Xbox One owners have been experiencing stuttering
images due to a mismatch between the refresh rate of the console (60Hz) and UK
TV (50Hz). We've described a workaround and we're waiting on word from
Microsoft to see if there's a more elegant solution.
Other gamers are encountering even more serious issues: some
Xbox One owners have been experiencing grinding Blu-Ray drives. In a nice touch
Microsoft isn't just replacing the faulty consoles, but also giving affected
customers a free digital copy of Dead Rising 3, Forza Motorsport 5, Ryse: Son
of Rome or Zoo Tycoon so that they can keep playing while they wait for their
replacements to arrive.
That's as long as they don't swear when they use their
Xbox's Upload Studio. Microsoft has been wielding the ban hammer on users
guilty of excessive profanity, with penalties ranging from 24-hour bans to
permanent bars on the worst offenders.
It's not just Xbox One owners who've been behaving badly.
PS4 punters have been doing it too, forcing Twitch to remove its Playroom app:
while the game is meant to show off what the PlayStation Camera can do, some
users are using it to show bits of their anatomy instead.
Costing the consoles
We know the Xbox is more expensive than the PS4, but is
Microsoft sticking it to gamers or is it offering more power? The answer
appears to be the latter: as Matt Swider reports, the difference in price is
largely due to Microsoft cramming more stuff into its console. Both firms are
probably selling consoles at a loss, initially at least.
One firm who isn't selling anything at a loss is EA, whose
PS4 games this week were listed at prices much higher than the same titles for
Xbox One. After an initial outcry the price came down a little bit; after
another outcry the price came down a whole lot more.
While we're on the subject of money, guess how much a Steam
Machine will set you back? If you guessed "pretty much the same as an Xbox
One", then you might be right.
The first firm to announce a price, iBuyPower, says its
Steam Machine will be US$499 (about £307, AU $547) when it goes on sale next
year.
Rather brilliantly, the firms' two prototypes have names
that Steam fans may find familiar: the first one's called Gordon, and the
second one Freeman.
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