Hi there,

As some of you may know, toward the end of last year I swapped my PS4 for an Xbox One. After making this announcement, some people in the thread showed interest in a direct comparison of the two machines. Well now I've owned both for the same period of time and felt that I could be fair in making a fairly objective comparison of the two.

I'll break it down into sections and then announce a clear winner at the end of each and an overall winner at the end. No draws.

Here goes.....

Aesthetics

PS4

The PS4 is by far the smallest and sleekest of the two consoles. If there's one thing Sony nails almost every time, it's making a sexy-looking product. The lack of a power brick also gets the PS4 points as I don't know many people who like the look of power bricks. The angular shape of the console is great and it's size is wonderful. The build quality is also fantastic.

Xbox One

Oh dear, this thing is a monster. An ugly monster. An ugly monster with a giant power brick. It also feels cheap and nasty. The Kinect is also big and ugly.

Winner: PS4 

Main Reason: Xbox sucks to look at. PS4 is almost perfect to look at.

Controller

PS4

The DS4 is a massive improvement on the DS3. I always found the DS controllers to be too small. Not anymore. This thing has the right dimensions everywhere. It fits in the hand perfectly. The face buttons feel great and L1 & R1 buttons are great too. I really like the touchpad as well. It's a great alternative for a mouse and it clicks nicely.

The R1 & R2 buttons on the other hand feel flimsy. There's simply not enough resistance when they're pressed. The analogue sticks also suffer from this problem, but nowhere near as much as the DS3 did. The L3 & R3 buttons are fine, but there's just not quite enough resistance in the movement of the sticks themselves.

Xbox One

The Xbox One controller is an interesting controller. I thought the Xbox 360 controller was absolutely perfect last gen apart from the d-pad, and to some extent I still think that's true. The Xbox One controller does improve on it in some ways though. In short: the sticks and triggers.

The resistance of the L2 & R2 triggers is wonderful and the individual rumble motors in each trigger are quite an experience. The triggers offer slightly less resistance than the 360 which took some adjustment, however there are deep recesses in the tops of the sticks with a wonderful textured grip around the edges which ensure absolute control in all game types.

The face buttons are fine but I found the new d-pad to be too clicky and cheap feeling. Same goes for the L1 & R1 shoulder buttons.

Kinect is almost useless. It works as promised but doesn't really add anything to the experience as far as I can tell. Buy the version without it if you're wondering.

Note of bias: for me it's especially useless as I game when the kids are in bed and Kinect requires you to almost yell at it. So I use the controller for almost everything. 

Winner: Xbox One

Main reason: Sticks and triggers are vital for almost all game types these days, and the Xbox One simply dominates in this area.

UI

PS4

Simplistic and slightly less confusing than the PS3 UI. It isn't great, but it isn't bad either. You scroll, you choose what you want. Simple and effective.

Xbox One

Like the PS4 UI, only worse. Getting to things like settings is a bit of a chore and there seem to be obvious things missing, like being able to adjust the borders of your screen using the settings options (if I'm wrong please tell me how to do this). Confusing.

Winner: PS4

Main reason: It's not that great, but it's still better than the Xbox One UI.

Online Experience

PS4

Works fine. I really don't see what you get for being forced to pay for online gaming this time around. PS+ was not great value during my time with the console. That should have changed by now though as there are probably some older AAA games coming to the service.

Xbox One

Surprisingly I've had more trouble with Xbox Live this gen than PS+. I have had numerous occasions where I couldn't connect to Xbox Live to play Advanced Warfare and MCC. MCC's problems are its own, however I'm pretty sure Advanced Warfare's issues can be blamed on Xbox Live. Could be all the DDOS garbage over the Christmas period, but whatever, that's my experience. If I pay for the service it had better work at all times. 

Games with Gold are mostly a waste of time. Although Rayman Legends came out recently and that game is spectacular! Play it if you haven't already.

Winner: PS4

Main reason: I had a better experience with PSN and it's actually cheaper in most cases.

Current Exclusives

PS4

Of the exclusives available on the PS4 I have played the following:

- Infamous: Second Son/First Light

- TLOU: Remastered

- Knack

- Driveclub

Of these the only one worth my time was TLOU: Remastered and that's only worth a go if you haven't played it before on PS3. Brilliant game, very little replay value in the campaign.

Xbox One

Of the Xbox One exclusives I have played the following:

- Titanfall* 

- Dead Rising 3

- Forza 5

- Forza Horizon 2

- Halo: MCC 

- Killer Instinct

* = also on PC

Of these games I really enjoyed Titanfall, Forza Horizon 2, Killer Instinct and Halo: MCC (when it finally stopped deleting my save files and started connecting online.....grrrr). FH2 and MCC are really great games.

Winner: Xbox One

Main reason: FH2 and MCC

Upcoming Exclusives

Bias note: Clearly this is a very subjective topic in a very subjective thread. So take this one with a handful of salt and add it to the grain you ate before reading this in the first place.

PS4

Of the upcoming PS4 exclusives I am interested in the following:

- Street Fighter V*

- Bloodborne

- Uncharted 4

- WiLD

Xbox One

Of the upcoming Xbox One exclusives I am interested in the following:

- Scalebound

- Halo 5

- Gears of War

- Quantum Break

Winner: Xbox One

Main Reason: Gears + Halo. Honestly if SFV wasn't coming to PC I might consider swapping back and would probably hand this article to the PS4. Thankfully that's not the case and so the overall winner is....

Overall Winner: Xbox One

Reasons: The games. PS4 is the better machine, of that there is no doubt. It's smaller, sexier, slightly more powerful and isn't bundled with useless accessories. However I buy these machines to do one thing: play games, and the Xbox One has more than a slight edge over the PS4 in that respect. If you prefer the PS4 library: go for it. There is absolutely nothing that the Xbox One can offer you that could make it more appealing than the PS4 if not for the games.

So there you have it, my take on which console is better after around 5 months of owning each machine. Thoughts?

I think you are correct, and I agree with your assessment.
Basically, using your criteria (and having not owned XOne), I would have given the same wins for the categories, except for the games. Because out of all exclusives for both consoles, there is only a single game that I look forward to: Uncharted 4. None of the already released games for either interest me. So, PS4 wins for me.

(Yes, I mostly play multiplats. Last gen, the only exclusives I liked were Uncharted and Left 4 Dead.)

EDIT: Oh, and it's Dead Rising 3.

So you say the ps4 is more powerfull why not giving it a point in a category like multiplats performance?

All is subjectif but i prefer ps4

Multiplats are multiplats. I didn't include them because you basically get the same experience on both machines.

Thanks. Fixed.

Uncharted 4 looks pretty amazing though. I was impressed with the AI in that alpha demo.

I feel every multiplat is better on the PS4. I also love the DS4 and only the the XB1 controller is ok. I do agree that the XB1 has a marginally better list of current exclusives, disagree on future.

To me since a vast majority of games are multiplat the fact the PS4 is the more powerful machine and will get better results on most of these games it is a massive factor that you are conviently ignoring.

I excluded it because the experience seems largely the same. There aren't any examples that I know of where it's like an entirely better experience on the PS4 compared to the Xbox One.

I play on a 70 inch TV, resolution directly affects my experience. The 1st half of last gen the X360's noticeable advantage in the quality of multiplats was a huge selling point for it. Funny how when it is now the other way around none of this matters anymore.

I won't support any console that makes you pay for the online multiplayer. But if I had to choose one of them, I'd get PS4. It will have more variety in its games by the end of its lifespam, most of the games that Microsoft has been pushing are shooter/action/sport, and I can get those in my PC.