XBOX ONE Spoiler Sitting here at the anniversary of the Xbox One’s launch, we look at Microsoft’s console and examine a fateful quotation from Corporate Vice President Phil Harrison concerning the essential identity of his company’s new console: “Xbox One is Kinect,” He said. “They are not separate systems. An Xbox One has chips, it has memory, it has Blue-ray, it has Kinect, and it has a controller. These are all part of the platform ecosystem.” Well… we all know how that went down… A false start of a launch year has given birth to one of the oddest things in the history of major game consoles: the Xbox One seemed to enter the public sphere with a specific, somewhat bold sense of its own identity, one that it basically decided to ditch. First we lost the “always on” feature along with used game restrictions, and then we lost an extra $50 off the price tag. Microsoft has gone from selling a machine billed as the connected, versatile, and voice-controlled centre to, of all things, a video game console… Who would have thought it?! Xbox One still has a lot of the same problems it did last year: the magical moment of “Xbox On” is still a shouty bust, along with most of Kinect 2.0’s theoretical promise. The TV stuff is still sort of superfluous. What’s different is that Microsoft isn’t focusing on those features anymore. If it’s just a game console, then the rest of that stuff just becomes a collection of odd additions, rather than the central selling point of your system. Xbox One still has a similar problem to PS4: namely, that most of the best games of the best games of the season can also be played on last-gen systems, meaning we still don’t have the critical mass required to really force an upgrade, and many of the “true next-gen experiences” we were promised have been largely meh. But it’s actually got some decent exclusives, from Sunset Overdrive, to Halo: Master Chief Collection, Forza Horizon 2 and the surprisingly engaging Fantasia: Music Evolved. The price dip during the holidays (and possibly afterwards) certainly doesn’t hurt. Last year, we were playing a pretty lopsided game. While neither the PS4 nor the Xbox One presented as a reasonable purchase by any stretch, the gamer that had already decided to buy a next-gen console found themselves with the cheaper, simpler and less obnoxious PS4 without too much thought. This year, both consoles represent much better buys: I’m still not sure if they’re must haves, but they will certainly get some use. And Xbox One has made a remarkable turn-around to the degree that gamers have a real choice to make this holiday season. Which is good, because as the first year of this console generation has proven, competition can work wonders! PS4 Spoiler With Nintendo and its floundering Wii U console barely a speck in the rapidly-shrinking distance, PS4 has battled Microsoft’s much-maligned Xbox One console at every turn and come up smelling of roses time after time. Records have been broken, exclusivity deals have been made and fan allegiances won and lost – so as Sony blew out the candles this November, was it greatness that awaited that sleek black box? PS4’s first month couldn’t have started any better; Microsoft’s garbled handling of Xbox One’s defining ‘always online’ and DRM features in the months leading up to its November launch had left its fan-base – both casual and hardcore – looking for a new port to call home (Oh… Look! A PS4!). With an aggressive PR campaign and some social media-minded executives in the form of Jack Tretton, Adam Boyes and Shuhei Yoshida, PS4 hit the ground running. In the US alone, PS4 sold 1 million units within the first 24 hours of launch (a staggering figure when you think it took Nintendo a whole year to sell 1.5 million Wii U’s) with global sales reaching 2.1 million by the beginning of December. PS4 went into the Christmas period as a must-have item, thanks in no small part to Sony’s aggressive pricing. At £399 in the UK it was a whole £30 cheaper than Microsoft’s rival platform and with requests for PS4’s going through the roof, Sony must have been wringing its hands with glee as it struggled to meet global demand. All these sales are a little surprising considering the relative lack of solid software available for new adopters, though. Two of PS4’s biggest launch titles – the socially-minded racer, Driveclub, and the uber-hyped open-world hacker sim, Watch Dogs – were delayed well into 2014, leaving Sony’s new hardware a little threadbare in the software department. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag proved to be one of the series’ most popular (and commercially successful) instalments, but it’s availability on last-gen consoles took much of its PS4 sheen away. It was much the same for cross-gen titles such as Need for Speed Rivals, FIFA 14, Madden 25, etc, while Battlefield blew its own foot off with servers as unstable as its much advertised falling skyscrapers (although this issue affected every single platform DICE’s shooter was released on, so its effect on PS4’s sales seemed marginal at best). Only cutesy plat-former Knack, download-only shoot-em-up Resogun and sci-fi shooter Killzone: Shadow Fall could offer the mystique of a proper “next-gen only” experience. It’s been about 20 months since Sony unveiled PS4 back in February 2013 and since then Sony has sold a mind-melting 13.5 million units world-wide. That’s quite a few people that have either upgraded from PS3, or switched over from Xbox, or purchased PS4 as a first console, with many of them likely charmed by Sony’s refreshingly no-nonsense promises. Question is how many of those promises actually made it into reality 12 months on? But honestly, right now I don’t think it matters. With regular, tangible firmware updates and a genuine belief in the importance of supporting independent developers, it’s the coming few years that are going to be the most exciting.
I have never really seen it as a war over who has more exclusives I would play. For that I tend to lean towards sony, hence why I have a ps4, however I do really want to play sunset overdrive. XB1 only needs a few more exclusives and ill snag a console as well. nice share
