Advice needed: PS4 or XBOX ONE?

[Starglider]

Depends what kind of gaming you want to do, I guess; I've seen refurbished PCs that can allegedly handle World of Warcraft on medium-to-low settings advertised for about $350.

That kind of junk would be competing with the X360 / PS3, not the newest gen consoles.

[Dominus Atheos]

Put me down as another vote for "360 or ps3" and "assload of cheap used games." Seriously, how many AAA titles can you buy for an xbox 360 vs the cost of just a xbone console, 10-15?

[Mr. Coffee]

Then build them each a PC. If price is no object this should be easy enough and then you can play games with your sons on a platform you do understand.

Probably cheaper as well, if you shop around a bit.

This is now a myth. You're not going to build a computer for gaming for less than $500. Factor in the cost of a monitor for each kid, and you're going to spend more than you would for one console, on one TV, for more than one player.

Who cares? The man said cost wasn't an issue.

[Forgothrax]

Who cares? The man said cost wasn't an issue.

He said he didn't care about cost when discussing the PS4 and XB1. That doesn't mean his budget is unlimited when it comes to gaming, just that a $100 difference doesn't really matter to him.

[Sea Skimmer]

If the X-Box One can bridge that gap, wouldn't it make sense that the cost of doing so may result in the games running at 1080p but still looking worse than games on the PS4? Also, what happens if the PS4 is able to 1080p 60 and the X-Box One can only do 1080p 30?

The whole reason certain games are not 1080p on the Xbox is because they could not do 60fps stable, and the game designers didn't want random changes in framerate, or lower stable framerates They set the max resolutions to the max they could sustain at 60fps. This was more or less explicitly stated for Call of Duty Ghosts, and has been inferred to explain the other lower resolution games.

Since the PS4 won't gain much from going above 60fps at a fixed resolution, its really just a catch up job for Xbox in the near term. In the long time I believe both consoles in fact can support the 4k resolutions for video playback, though they may never be able to render high end games at such high resolution. It will also just be an open question on if the PS4 gets games developed for it that take significant advantage of its power superiority. With so few high end PS4 exclusives this might just not happen, unless the PS4 really manages to open a big lead with better development tools ect... this feels irrelevant to a current day buy decision. Who knows how reliable these things are going to be.

[Zaune]

That's not exactly a selling point, bub. WoW was designed to run on hardware from 2004, got it's most recent major graphics overhaul in 2010, and will get another for character models and a new expansion zone either next year or the year after and neither of these graphical updates are really that big an overhaul.

Millions of people still play it, though. The point I'm trying to make is that for a lot of gaming genres the latest and greatest graphics hardware isn't essential anymore because fewer and fewer games fully utilise it. And I'm not talking niche-appeal stuff either, unless you can call Minecraft a niche game with a straight face.

[TheFeniX]

An i3, a few gigs of RAM, and something like a GTX 650 will play pretty much any current gen game. It won't pull 4k ultra at 60 FPS though, but neither will the current consoles. Oh yea, and it will output HDMI to your TV, has controller support, and there are numerous same screen co-op games out there for PC. You can score that for around $500. If you went a bit more, and assuming PCE-E doesn't go anywhere (it shouldn't), you could pick up an i5 or i7 for future proofing and just upgrade the video card every 3 years. And any modern Video Card can output HDMI to a TV. With high-quality 1080p TVs out, also gone are the days where it looked like shit. 1080p is a fine gaming resolution with 4k requiring another monitor/TV investment. If you're spending $3,000+ on a 4k TV, then you should be buying a badass rig to game on instead of a console anyways.

Let's face facts, games haven't exactly improved substantially in the graphics and performance department in several years, mostly due to console hardware stagnation and lazy developers. We've even gone backwards in development of other resource heavy aspects such as AI. But people are expecting insane shit from bargain PCs, yet give consoles a pass. Probably because they just don't know any better.

People need to get over the idea that you need thousands of dollars in hardware to enjoy gaming on PC. What they leave out is the performance gain you get for that extra money. Go pick up a copy of L4dead 1 or 2 on Xbox and (even an older) PC. Play the 360 first, then load up the PC version. The difference is staggering with 30FPS (even lower during events) vs 60fps solid. The difference is mainly that if my hardware can't keep up with a game or I can live with performance over eye-candy, I can turn shit down on my PC, forcibly through drivers if I have to. That is not an option on consoles, at least no game I've ever seen.

[FedRebel]

If you buy an XBox One, you're a fool who is too loose with your money. The very fact that they had insane DRM practices when it was launched and then changed their mind should be enough to not make you buy it.

M$ like Sony cares about only one thing...raw profit, $ony isn't a knight in shining armor by any measure.

The PS4 also had a hefty Day One patch, after the backlash M$ got they quietly buried their plans under the rug.

The market reacted violently to M$'s plans, since they were public knowledge the repeal had to be as well.

Plus, the fucking BD Player won't even play burned BDs, so if you have a home movie on a BD-R, an amateur videographer, etc, you're fucked. You can't watch it. You have to have a studio mastered disc. Then there's the Live subscription you need for things like Netflix and HBO Go. Then there's the kinect which is, just like the majority of the Xbox One's features, a gimmick. Spend that extra $100 for motion control, shitty picture in picture, and voice commands that you won't even use!

I'm on your side with the paywall, unless you already have a Gold account, XB1 as a Roku replacement won't work (you could plug a Roku into the passthrough as a workaround.)

As far as "gimmicks" go, the PS4 has the touchpad and the battery guzzling move light you can't disable...which of course is there to encourage your purchase of a PS Camera. the PS4 is not absolved from having useless features.

BD-R is bummer, agreed, XB1 can play DVD, DVD-R, CD, and CD-R...PS4 lacks a red laser altogether and uses an app for BD movie playback.

[Starglider]

As far as "gimmicks" go, the PS4 has the touchpad

The touchpad would be very useful for a large number of apps & games, as anyone who has ever used a laptop would tell you.

[Zaune]

The touchpad would be very useful for a large number of apps & games, as anyone who has ever used a laptop would tell you.

True, but anyone who's ever used a laptop probably plugs a mouse into it instead if they're doing anything complicated, like playing an RTS. And I think you could plug a USB mouse into the previous generation of consoles anyway, except for the Wii which didn't really need them.

[Starglider]

And I think you could plug a USB mouse into the previous generation of consoles anyway, except for the Wii which didn't really need them.

Technically yes, keyboards as well. However humans are (on average) lazy and technically inept and can't even be bothered to plug in HDMI leads, thus the current push for wireless video connections.

[fordlltwm]

The touchpad would be very useful for a large number of apps & games, as anyone who has ever used a laptop would tell you.

True, but anyone who's ever used a laptop probably plugs a mouse into it instead if they're doing anything complicated, like playing an RTS. And I think you could plug a USB mouse into the previous generation of consoles anyway, except for the Wii which didn't really need them.

Touchpads can be set up to be superior to mice on laptops, it's just no one ever bothers setting them up. I played through Fallout: New Vegas on a Samsung R380 without ever bothering to use a mouse, I also play Age of Empires 2 and 3 on it quite often again without bothering with a physical mouse, so I'd say that providing there's options on the sensitivity, speed etc... a touchpad can be a really useful thing.

[TheFeniX]

Being able to play Age of Empires (a simple and slow-paced RTS, at least in the micro-management) and NV using VATS hardly qualifies a touchpad as "superior" to a mouse.

[fordlltwm]

If I used VATS often I'd give you the point, but I'll agree AOE is a fairly slow paced game. Perhaps superior was the wrong word, but I rarely feel the need to grab a mouse for my laptop whatever I'm doing. The exception being if I'm watching a film on it through a TV across the room I might plug in a wireless keyboard and mouse just to make using it easier from where I'm sitting. I'd still say a large percentage of people rarely touch the settings that come with a touchpad, instead they just struggle on with it on default and then moan that it's "too jerky", "feels dead", "too slow" etc... As an example my housemate and I had identical laptops supplied by our department when we started uni, neither of us could use the others touchpad effectively because we'd both customised them to suit our own preferences, in fact most people find the way mine behaves to be very odd, yet I find it extremely effective and easy to use.